Walkers Gets the Word Out Via Social Media

Hauppauge, N.Y. — Walkers Shortbread, a 115-year-old company that stresses tradition and family, has understandably taken a delicate approach to social media marketing. Sure, Walkers has had a website with e-commerce capabilities for years, but its Pinterest page, established in 2012, was its first social media presence.The brand’s target consumer base has been older people who like to entertain and give Walkers as a gift. But now, that base has passed its preferences to its children, so Walkers is focusing on that generation.The company recently began working on a Facebook page, and its outreach to bloggers is under way as well. To drive more business to its website and e-commerce portal, Walkers in February organized a “Recipe Challenge” – a competition for eight New York-area food bloggers to create a delicacy using Walkers products.Originally slated for November 2012, the Challenge got pushed to February of this year due to Hurricane Sandy’s impact on New York. The grand prize was a $500 Visa gift card, two tickets to the Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show, and a basket of specialty food products.Walkers brand manager Lisa Sherman says the winning blogger gave the basket to one of her followers, exactly the type of action the brand wanted, especially with no Facebook or Twitter presences. “The goal was to breed more of a relationship with the bloggers,” she says. “We came away with some great recipes and some media attention. Seeing this was the first time we did anything like this, we definitely felt this was a success.“This wasn’t done with a specific ROI goal like many marketing promotions. Not everything can correlate back to an ROI. We have these recipes and wonderful photography to add to our Pinterest page. Now we have new people following our Pinterest page who get to see our messages and our new products. For us that’s a win-win.”Sherman says Walkers sent the results of the challenge and a list of products used in the winning recipe to its email subscribers, with discount codes for use on the website.The promotion has had an effect at retail as well – photos and recipes have been included on tear sheets on its shippers.The experience provided momentum toward establishing formal relationships with bloggers, with samples and a logo for official Walkers bloggers to post on their pages.

Walkers Gets the Word Out Via Social Media

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