It's getting a little chilly these days but Ben&Jerry's is still doing fine.As I continued to monitor their social media analytics data through the past month, I found more interesting stuff in Ben&Jerry's social media performances and was able to gather more data sets for comparison.
In my last post on Ben&Jerry's, it's obvious that they've been talked about online, mostly positively. And their cartoonish, childish key tone is adored by their customers and social media audience. Looking into their social media performances, you could easily see the seasonal variances. But overall, they have fairly good consistency as observed from the analytical results.
In this post, I'll present you my monitoring result from September 15 through November 3. By comparing and analyzing them, I'll point out Ben&Jerry's strengths and weaknesses in handling social media and what they could do to improve their performance to create a better connection with their audience and generate more buzz.
The Scotchy Scotch Scotch Campaign
On October 22, Ben&Jerry's released a new flavor named Scotchy Scotch Scotch dedicated to Ron Burgundy, the famous San Diego newsman from the 2004 movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. The launch of the Scotchy Scotch Scotch came one day prior to the release of the new trailer for the Anchorman sequel - Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
Launching new flavors into the market is no news for Ben&Jerry's, especially when they just released the Pumpkin Cheesecake flavor on October 8. But this time it was more than a simple post and announcement online, Ben&Jerry's have actually carried out a campaign promoting this new limited edition flavor. And here's how they do it:
Website:
Ben&Jerry's seldom changes their front page for a new flavor. With the new campaign in full swing, Ben&Jerry's are committed to make a difference.
By recreating the famous newsroom scene and quoting one of the lines in the movie ("I'm kind of a big deal" when Ron was trying to pick up Victoria), it has established a connection with the Anchorman fans.And by creating a fan-generated "Find Your Scotchy Scotch Scotch" Flavor Locator, they are empowering the customers to help create a "Scotchy Scotch Scotch" map, which is normally taken care of by the company itself.
Overall, the changes on the website are surprising. It has generated a better link with the customers than it used to.
Facebook:
Ben&Jerry's have a fairly large Facebook fan base.
They have been talking about the new flavor release ever since October 20 and ask fans to guess what that would be. And it has definitely generated a buzz.
Twitter:
Ben&Jerry's have followed the same steps as Facebook in Scotchy Scotch Scotch's launch. Yet it has more consistency and some differences:
Of course Ben&Jerry's official Instagram and Youtube page have also participate in the campaign. But to my surprise, Instagram, often its best social media tools to communicate with the audience, only has two posts about the launch of the new flavor, and Youtube, which has lack of activity in comparison, has uploaded a new video:
A Buzz From the Scotch
So did the campaign make a difference in Ben&Jerry's social media performance? The answer is YES.
 |
| Figure.1 B&J's social media analytic result between Sep.15-Oct.16 |
According to Social Mention, Ben&Jerry's held a steady performance on their social media platform (Figure.1) But when I was monitoring their performance throughout the campaign, I noticed something interesting.
Figure.2 shows the monitor results from Oct.13-Nov.3. So the Scotchy Scotch Scotch campaign has without a doubt generated a buzz in social media. Yet the passion dropped, meaning the likelihood of people who participated in the buzz talking about Ben&Jerry's again is less. And thus the result on Nov.3 was back to the normal steadiness.
 |
| Figure.2 |
For individual social media platform performance analysis, I looked into their Facebook and Twitter trends over the campaign.As shown in the Facebook insight, there's a buzz during the campaign period but then it dropped this week. And although they already have a pretty big fan base, it seemed that they have gained some new likes during the campaign. Socialbakers's data also proves this.
As for Twitter, the number of their followers are increasing steadily. However, you could also notice a little boost since the campaign, and the boost didn't slow down afterwards. That might be related to the fact that their effort on Twitter for Scotchy Scotch Scotch is more consistent - it didn't end after the launch, but rather, they were talking about it every couple days to keep audience's interest high.
How about search engine? Google Trends shows that people's interest in Ben&Jerry's are going down before October, which is normal since ice cream is a seasonal type of sweet/dessert. But as shown, there's a boost during the same time of the Scotchy Scotch Scotch campaign.
As for blog posts, according to Meltwater IceRocket, there's an obvious proportional relation between people's interest in Ben&Jerry's and the launch of Scotchy Scotch Scotch. Yet the boost didn't last long.
I was also interested in seeing how Ben&Jerry's have been doing compared to two of its competitors: ColdStone Creamery and Hagen-Dazs. So I used Wildfire to compare their Facebook and Twitter performances.
Ben&Jerry's have a definite triumph on Facebook likes and a steady growth. The sudden drop in January might be a technical mistake or lack of data. Overall the popularity of its Facebook page is increasing.
As for Twitter, I was again surprised by what I got. Ben&Jerry's and ColdStone were almost at the same place in May, 2010, and Hagen-Dazs joined in 2012 with the same base. Yet the ratio of growth of Ben&Jerry's over the past 3 months is astonishing.
Recommendation
Through my monitoring project, I found that Ben&Jerry's social media performances were astonishingly well. Originally a small New England native ice cream factory, Ben&Jerry's transformed into an international ice cream manufactory brand. While its market is similar to fellow ice cream giants Coldstone Creamery and Hagen-dazs, it doesn't rely on traditional advertising like its competitors might have, rather, it has embraced the groundswell and utilized social media to make a difference. It's really impressive.However, nobody is perfect, but we can give our best effort everyday. So I have a couple suggestions for Ben&Jerry's based on my observations and analysis.
1. "Who's talking on Twitter"
The idea of the "Who's talking on Twitter" tab is genius. But first it needs to be functional. Once it's working, people will be able to find Tweets about Ben&Jerry's and its flavors through this search engine easily. And then Ben&Jerry's should generate conversations with and between the audience by, for example, creating flavor hashtags, supporting fans to form a community or form one for them, encouraging retweets to create buzzes, etc.2. Open the Flavor Locator to the Public
The fan-created Flavor Locator for the new flavor Scotchy Scotch Scotch is great. It empowered fans to create the flavor map by themselves. It's like a mapping version of wiki, it's new and it's fun to see a scoop being put up on the map because of the information you provide. So why not allow people to be the Flavor Locator themselves. Hashtags could be created for this, social media share buttons should be linked to encourage people to share their discovery with their friends. Also, what if you could also see who shares the same passion for your favorite Ben&Jerry's flavor geographically and maybe find yourself a new friend? The potential is unlimited.
3. Let the Buzz Continue
Creating a buzz is not a problem for Ben&Jerry's, but keeping it buzzing is. As shown in the data presented earlier, the buzz for Scotchy Scotch Scotch has only lasted for less then a month. But a great opportunity to boost the brand like this shouldn't be wasted. Hence creating conversation around campaigns, events, etc. is more important than simply talking to the audience. For example, for the launch of Scotchy Scotch Scotch, some simple Anchorman related Q&A with Ben&Jerry's new flavor as the reward could not only foster conversation by tapping into the movie, but also strengthen its funny brand image in fans' heart.4. More Youtube Videos
Youtube is the weakest link of all Ben&Jerry's social media platform. It's rarely updated and has only 627 subscribers. Additionally, it's not easy to find the ONE official Youtube page because there are so many of them. So Ben&Jerry's should definitely get its Youtube page organized. Once it's done, create more videos monthly, or better, weekly, to engage the audience. For instance, film the processes of the Ben&Jerry's ice cream recipes that are posted on Instagram, Facebook, etc, or film the recipes provided by fans; encourage fans to send you original videos telling their stories with their favorite Ben&Jerry's ice cream. It's not that difficult but the influence would be worthy of the investment for sure.5. More Events and Marketing Campaigns
Even though Ben&Jerry's marketing focus shifted to Europe and Asia a few years ago, I still think they should create more events and campaigns around their products, the brand, and their educational and environmental missions. Especially for new products, more should be done in the States for branding purposes. The Scotchy Scotch Scotch campaign has shown the potential for successful marketing and more campaigns like this should be conducted in the future. Ben&Jerry's have such a strong company culture; it should be promoting a life style instead of only ice cream.
It's interesting and impressive to see how an international brand rely more on social media marketing than traditional ones to promote itself in the States. I think it would be intriguing to see Ben&Jerry's social media performance when the movie Anchorman 2 comes out this December. Hopefully they will do even better than the launch of Scotchy Scotch Scotch.
