Valley PR Blog

40,000 to 100,000 Facebook fans in 9 months

By Linda VandeVrede on May 17th, 2010 In Agencies, Best Practices

Arizona agency Bulbstorm, which is owned by Bart Steiner, has been using social media platform Facebook as a viral tool to generate awareness, growth and engagement for their client Ruiz Foods’ (Dinuba, Calif) product, Tornados snack brand. 

Fans were asked to submit a slogan for Tornados and an optional photo of themselves enjoying the snack. Alternatively, they could rate or comment on submissions to earn points redeemable for prizes such as digital video cameras, branded merchandise, NASCAR tickets, and a meet-and-greet with NASCAR’s Ryan Newman.   When Tornados reached the 100,000 fan mark this past week, it released coupons to its fans in the form of Buy 1 Get 1 FREE e-coupons.

I asked Bulbstorm Marketing Director Matt Simpson a few more questions about the project.  

1).  What old-school methods do you think agencies might have tried in the past to reach this kind of milestone, if social media weren’t around?

To develop a fan base in the pre-social world, a consumer packaged goods brand like Tornados would typically have poured millions into traditional branding vehicles like television/radio commercials and print advertising. Fans are spending 5+ minutes per visit into the branded game on Facebook. From a time perspective, this is the equivalent of 10 30-second commercials. From an engagement perspective, the fans are interacting (rating, commenting and sharing) as opposed to just watching.

2).  Naysayers would say, yeah it’s great that you reached 100,000 fans, but has that turned into appreciable sales for Tornados?  Does Ruiz Foods have any before and after sales figures to map against the Facebook campaign?

Facebook efforts have increased brand awareness and sales for Tornados, which is a relatively new brand. We know this for two reasons. First, coupons claimed within Facebook promotions are redeemed at a 40-50 percent clip. The same coupons distributed (at higher cost) in the Sunday newspaper typically draw a redemption rate of under 10 percent for an established brand. Second, the Facebook page has been a primary driver of new consumers into stores – whether those new consumers find Tornados via the brand’s NASCAR sponsorship, the brand’s dotcom, or Facebook promos. Tornados has uneven distribution across retail chains, so fans use our Facebook-only interactive map (http://apps.facebook.com/tornadosmap) to find stores by ZIP code. We’ve seen tens of thousands of queries in the last two months.

 3). Do you think there are certain products that lend themselves more easily to viral Facebook, such as food products?

 Consumers are most likely to share content that A) was created by them and B) is tied into an incentive. That’s why our promotional solution is based around consumer ideas for brands. And that’s why we focus on industries that lend themselves to consumer ideas such as consumer packaged goods (everyone uses them so everyone has ideas), restaurant chains (everyone thinks they know food), sports teams (everyone thinks they’re an armchair QB), etc.  

 4). What are the demographics of your target Tornados consumer?

 Tornados is a snack brand available on hot rollers in convenience stores and in the frozen foods section of grocery stores. So, the target demo is young men who like convenient snacks (hence the alignment with NASCAR).

 5). Did you use any other social media tools to tie in to Facebook or to lead fans to Facebook?

We communicated with a number of coupon bloggers via Twitter and email and gave them (and their audiences) first access to the promotion. However, the vast majority of the promotion has taken place on Facebook itself.

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