Live healthier with the new Mission App from Whole Foods
For all you foodie app junkies out there, and you know who you are! … check out the new “Mission App” from Whole Foods.
Hats Off to Whole Foods … this app is a really strong example of both mobile application and peer-to-peer communication … and another reason that my iPhone looks so used and beaten up. From a marketing point of view, apps like this one further elevate and extend the Whole Foods brand … certainly this app is a perfect manifestation of the Whole Foods mission.
The Mission App allows users to earn badges for taking steps toward various goals. There are more than 70 “missions” for you to choose from. Within each is a checklist of foods to eat, things to do, even movies to watch. All designed to educate and push you out of whatever rut you’re stuck in. When you successfully complete all of the requirements within a category you earn a badge. You can share your badges with friends via twitter, facebook or email.
Personally, I’m not going for any badges. For me, the usefulness is the Tips section … it offers more than 300 tips across nine subject matters: Cooking, Fresh & Frugal, Green Living, In the Store, Nutrition, Storage, Time Savers, Your Wellness and a kind of strange group called Worth a Try. I’ve found many of the tips to be helpful, especially those in Cooking and Storage.
Fun, succinct and social. Oh, and free! Available for iPad, iPhone and iPod.
The Lay’s® Locavore Alert … a real potato farm could be coming to your town!
High noon at the Lay's event in Chicago
Try Something New
Between yesterday and mid-September, fifty Brazilian families will randomly “win a day of Unilever sponsored family fun” and presumably will let us all know about the experience of being followed home and filmed by a Unilever promotions team.
Here’s the concept. Fifty boxes of Unilever’s Omo new stain-fighting detergent, spread amongst 35 Brazilian cities, will carry a GPS tracking chip. Thirty-five Omo promotional teams will be standing by to follow the signal to someone’s home, congratulate the winner and present them with a pocket-sized video camera and a certificate for their day of fun.
Reaction of the surprised winner will, of course, be filmed and posted online at experimentealgonovo.com.br (Portuguese for “try something new) — as will the photos of winners and their locations.
“Is your detergent stalking you?” asks Advertising Age of the new promotion called “Try Something New with Omo.” Omo and their agency, Bullet, are being criticized for privacy by some, commended for an innovative promotion by others.
Personally, I’m on the side of innovative promotion but only if the winners are given the option of not being posted or named on the website. I don’t believe there is even implied consent for use of image … all they did was buy laundry detergent.
Omo is Brazil’s top selling detergent, with a home penetration of 80%. It accounts for half of the detergent sales in the country. One report said that this campaign will cost about $1 million, start to finish, of Omo’s annual $23 million advertising budget. Although the product here is detergent, certainly if the promotion is successful, it will be moving in to all sorts of consumer goods.
So, what do you think … creepy and invasive? A promotional break-through that smartly leverage’s today’s technology? Or both?
Viral Gets Nestle … The Palm Oil “Incident”
Yes, it’s great when viral advertising takes hold, isn’t it? Nestle Amsterdam achieved “viral advertising icon status” with its fake Jesus commercial (see previous blog posting). Nestle corporate achieved “viral advertising wrath”, big-time, by attempting to remove a viral Greenpeace ad linking Kit Kat bars to climate change from YouTube . “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.”
What chaos! What a backlash!
Activists, outraged consumers and digital geeks all united in the thrashing of Nestle throughout social media outlets. Many were incensed by Nestle’s use of palm oil, purchased through Sinar Mas—a company with one of the worst environmental records and linked to illegal deforestation. Others were angry that a corporation would violate the basic tenets of social media by banning someone else’s video.
Nestle’s rather benign and rarely visited Facebook page was barraged with comments ranging from generally to aggressively nasty comments and other creative expressions of the Kit Kat and Nestle logos. Nestle further dug themselves into a hole by threatening action against copyright violators.
As the online frenzy moved to the terrestrial world through protests and events, Nestle finally took it seriously and on May 17, issued a statement that Sinar Mas is no longer part of their supply chain. However, Nestle does still purchase palm oil from Cargill, which is supplied in part by Sinar Mas. So, the online discussion continues and the anti-Nestle throng continues to multiply.
I like to talk with our clients about emerging consumer demands for transparency … and provide a gentle warning that the days of the passive consumer are over. This trend has steadily grown over the past couple of years, as consumers started scrutinizing company practices in addition to the nutrition labels.
Sustainability is also a huge topic on the minds of consumers, increasing considerablyly as purchase criteria for both foods and supplements. And companies can’t disrespect this; consumers have ways of peeking behind the curtain and are not shy about voicing their findings loudly, clearly and globally.
For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to the Greenpeace video as well as info on Nestle’s announcement to discontinue with Sinar Mas.
Nestle Gets Viral … The Kit Kat “Hoax”
The chocolate bar in question
Have you seen the Kit Kat “commercial” starring none other than Jesus himself? Well, not really himself, but something in his image.
It seems that Nestle Amsterdam made a viral “commercial” of an “anonymous Dutch Guy” who took a bite of a Kit Kat bar and an image of Jesus mysteriously appeared in his teeth marks. They produced this on the heels of a week’s worth of media coverage of multiple Jesus-icon discoveries and sent it to two media outlets in the Netherlands. Look, another Jesus in an inanimate object!
Well, the two media outlets ran it, and subsequently the video was picked up all over the world in a matter of days. This was a year ago on Good Friday, and the hits on YouTube continue, as do comments via Twitter, Facebook and in the media. People are still laughing … still insulted … but still talking.
The success of coverage obtained, the viewership and the online dialog generated by this fake commercial is part of the “digital media will kill traditional” onslaught. Yet for world-wide viral appeal, there must be an edge, and typically corporate-America is too frightened to produce something this provocative. Making fun of Jesus on Good Friday? I don’t think so! Poking fun of religious icons in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands is a big nothing. In the US, it’s taboo. Yes, the web is worldwide … but is it a cultural leveler? And if not, what is the ultimate fate of US creative?
Interestingly, most of the online discussion isn’t ripping on the sacrilege, but rather voicing offense over faking the image for purposes of marketing (which never happens in the traditional world, right?) and hoaxing the public with a fake news story.
The case study is fascinating. View, and use your own judgment.
The Online Impact at the Grocery Store
Cereal Scan iPhone app
This type of mobile usage is just starting to catch fire. I’ve been loading apps for scanning as soon as they were available. Red Laser crashed my iPhone on its inaugural day; but updates have shown continual improvement. Good Guides also has a scanner app, telling you not only nutritional information, but company’s social and sustainability records as well. Food Scanner is ok, it keeps a food diary for you if you want it to, but I’ve found that its database isn’t populated with most of the stuff that I eat. I do track my food intake, though, through Lose It. But that’s another story.
A recent Deloitte study (conducted in March, 2010 and just released last week) indicates that 7% of those surveyed are using mobile apps at the grocery store. Why? To compare prices, redeem coupons, find discounts, read product reviews and of course, get nutritional information either through an app or by linking directly to a company/product website.
I’m forever fascinated by the differences in grocery shopping habits between men and women. Mobile usage for food shopping is no different. Overwhelmingly, men use mobile apps to retrieve discounts (53% vs. 38%) and compare prices (59% vs. 49%).
Women use mobile apps most to obtain nutritional information (36% vs. 18).
Armed with information, 23% of those surveyed said that they have bought a food item because of something read on line; and 22% said that they’ve “not purchased a food product as a result of something read online.”
Pat Conroy from Deloitte stated, “Consumers realize their shopping choices have expanded, giving them the ability to be more selective about their purchases based on a variety of criteria. The question companies are asking now is, ‘Will this more critical eye towards purchasing be the new norm or just a passing result of the economic downturn?’”.
