UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging

Chapter 18. Tassimo

JUSTIFYING SOCIAL MEDIA is easy to do for marketing consultants like me. My clients are usually ready and willing to embrace the power of engaging with their community. This isn't the case when it comes to large corporations who are so used to the old style of marketing that it sometimes almost takes a miracle to help them see the new way of doing things.

Kraft Canada was a different story when Duri Al-Ajrami, the director of social marketing for Ogilvy Canada, approached them. He knew that the power of social media would work incredibly well in getting the word out about the new Tassimo single-cup hot beverage brewing system that Kraft was about to launch in Canada.

The easy way to do things would have been to simply do what any company always has done and invest millions in a TV ad campaign and hope that within all the noise somebody would hear you. It always baffles me to see companies fight for better ways to air commercials when consumers are thinking about better ways to avoid commercials.

Duri persisted with the client and was willing to prove that it would work. Ogilvy and Kraft monitored the conversation about coffee in general, their special brand, and their competitors. Their goal was to exponentially grow the conversation about this new machine without clouding the airways with unwanted commercials.

Due to budget constraints, they were unable to use mass TV advertising and instead purchased one thousand machines to give away to influential people in social ...