Birds Eye Grows Fan Base

Parsippany, N.J. — Pinnacle Foods didn't want to simply offer a coupon for its Birds Eye Voila skillet meals. The manufacturer wanted consumers to share that coupon with friends. "One of the insights we had around Birds Eye is that consumers had a very high propensity to want to share and talk about our meals with their friends and family. We had this natural influx of brand advocates," says Kristen Thompson, Birds Eye Voila senior brand manager. "How can we leverage this power of word of mouth that we already have with our fans to drive more advocacy in people that may not have tried us yet?"The answer was a social media-based campaign launched in the spring that gave unprecedented marketing support to the Voila meals. "This is probably one of the most targeted and focused campaigns we've done to date," says Thompson. "We have a very high repeat purchase rate. It's the highest in our immediate category. One of the things we want to ensure that we're doing with our campaign is directing people to try the product versus solely driving awareness."Birds Eye Voila targets consumers who don't have a lot of time but still want nutritious meal options – in this case, women aged 34-54 who are their household's primary grocery shopper.Thompson says the campaign is a cross-platform "tiered loyalty program" designed to encourage consumers to share the brand with their social network:"Here's One, Share One." Beginning April 9 and running for two weeks, Birds Eye provided coupons to its existing website community members and Facebook fan base to thank them for their loyalty – $1 coupons for simply being a fan, or $2 coupons for also inviting three friends to join the brand's community (via email)."Try It, You'll Like It." Launching at the conclusion of the initial promotion, this was designed to increase the number of Facebook fans (from 10,000 on April 9) to 100,000, a number it reached by the end of May. Birds Eye then distributed coupons to fans who had "Liked" the brand – for themselves and to share. "The organic spread of this far exceeded our expectations," says Thompson."Digital badges." Running the duration of the campaign, the brand designed this promotion to encourage participants to earn badges through sharing, interacting and purchasing Voila meals. "It's a way to get that element of gaming and fun into the shopping experience," says Thompson. "It's not overtly clear what you have to do to earn these different rewards, so the curiosity sort of takes over and people are trying to figure out what exactly they have to do. By doing that they are engaging with our brand and our products more."Thompson indicated there were plans to launch another social sharing program later in the year that would include an emphasis on user-generated content and consumers' experiences with the Voila meals.Birds Eye supported the campaign with in-store elements from April to June, including freezer shelf talkers, coupon dispensers and floor decals that mentioned the "Try It, You'll Like It" program. The P-O-P materials directed consumers to Voila's Facebook page and website. Retailers included Bi-Lo, Food Lion, Giant Landover, Harris Teeter, Kroger and Safeway.The brand also used paid advertising such as Facebook ads, which launched late March and ran through mid-May, and ads on retailer partner websites (via Winooski, Vt.-based MyWebGrocer) that ran the second week of April through the end of June on sites such as Kroger.com. The creative revolved around the consumer making dinner in a short amount of time with the help of skillet meals, with a call to action that linked back to the Facebook page or website. "Digital media is an extremely relevant and efficient medium to reach our consumers," Thompson says.Birds Eye Voila packaging wasn't modified for this campaign, but it was updated in the final quarter of 2011 in order to emphasize the quality of the food and better connection to the brand. Creative and media for the campaign totaled less than $2 million.Thompson says metrics for the campaign focus on engagement, like Facebook "Likes," time and depth consumers are spending with the brand, and click-through rates. Pinnacle Foods set a 91% coupon redemption objective. As of mid-May, the campaign was tracking ahead of most metrics, according to Thompson.While she couldn't yet share information about the ROI, she says this is "one of the more efficient campaigns that I've worked on."Tenth Wave, New York, handled the creative and strategy for the campaign. Optimedia, New York, purchased the banner ad media. Pinnacle Foods designed the in-store elements in-house; they were produced and distributed by News America Marketing's SmartSource, New York.

Birds Eye Grows Fan Base

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