Kraft Fumbles Potential Blogging Bonanza
Last week, the blogosphere was all abuzz about the creation of the very serious sounding The Blog Council where “where the people who run large companies’ blogs share best practices and new ideas”. Come on, we’re well into this blogging, let’s have a conversation, everyone has a voice thing - and there’s still a pressing need for businesses to talk the talk about blogging?
In any event, I hope Kraft is paying attention because it’s clear they don’t have a clue when it comes to working the blogosphere, or working with bloggers.
Case in point: About a month ago, my friend, Mike McDerment, did something truly extraordinary when he sent two boxes of Triscuits to Fiji after one of his clients, Oceanic, jokingly complained about how they were unavailable where he lived. Oceanic was impressed by the gesture, and Mike and his company, Freshbooks, gained a long-time customer and a lot of goodwill.
I was so impressed that I did two things: one, I sent an e-mail to Seth Godin because it struck me sending Triscuits to a customer in the middle of the Pacific is the kind of thing Godin talks and writes about. Godin promptly replied with a “that’s really interesting, thanks for sending the story along” e-mail. Nice.
I also sent a note about sending Triscuits to Fiji to Kraft Canada. Well, I filled out a form on the media page after spending a long time trying to figure out whether there was a person I could contact. Weeks go by without a peep from Kraft until an e-mail appeared in my inbox yesterday.
Thank you for visiting http://www.kraft.com/. (Note: Actually, it was kraft.ca)
We are flattered and delighted to hear that Kraft Foods became part of one your special family moments captured on camera or video.
We appreciate you wanting to share your images with us. As much as we would like to view your pictures or video, unfortunately, our system is not currently set up to accept e-mail attachments from our consumers.
Thank you again for contacting us and for your loyalty. We hope to continue to be part of special picture moments with you and your family for many years to come.
It was great hearing from you, and remember we’re always updating our site so visit us again soon!
Kim McMiller
Associate Director, Consumer Relations
It’s clear Kim sent me a Dear Triscuit Consumer letter - the same one that anyone gets when they write to Kraft about Triscuits.
And what really hurts is Kim didn’t even read my blog post because there was no pictures or video involved. And I didn’t send them an attachment because the form on Kraft Canada’s Web site doesn’t let you include attachments.
Finally, Kim didn’t use her own e-mail address. The e-mail came from from Onlineteam@casupport.com, which is just so warm and personal, don’t ya think!
Kraft, you blew it big time.
Not only did you let me and Freshbooks down, you dropped the ball on a major PR/media/blogosphere opportunity.
If Kraft really understood social media and blogging, they would have done something creative and conversational. They would have called Mike to ask about his story, and perhaps send a few cartons of Triscuits to Fiji. That would have been very cool.
But no; Kraft did nothing of the kind. For a company that spends 10s of millions of dollars a year on advertising and marketing to win customer loyalty, they had a huge chance to score enormous amounts of goodwill but they didn’t have the foresight, skills, interest and/or ability to take advantage of it.
If I were Kraft, I’d be calling Shel Israel, Robert Scoble or anyone who has some expertise in social media and blogging because the company needs all the help it can get.
Technorati Tags: Freshbooks, Kraft, The Blog Council, Triscuits
December 12th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Gosh, this seems like an excellent opportunity to pimp by my writing project. But I shall demure. That is really uh, crap from Kraft.
December 12th, 2007 at 8:58 am
[...] of notifying Kraft Canada of this story. They didn’t reply for weeks, and when they did they sent a generic, inaccurate response: It’s clear Kim sent me a Dear Triscuit Consumer letter - the same one that anyone gets when they [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Oh come on Mark, Kraft’s attitude is BFD for a good reason. Kraft also doesn’t sponsor sports teams or NASCAR cars and they don’t have any hospital wings named after them and they don’t advertise in high-fashion magazines, etc etc.
Not every brand wants to advertise through every possible media channel. Kraft isn’t about the social media channel. Who cares? Is your opinion that every single brand in the world needs an online social media presence? Is that really practical?
December 12th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I don’t mean to be devil’s advocate but most corporations still don’t get social media so I’m not too surprised. On the other hand, you recevied a form reply completely inappropriate to your original message because there was no way to reach them aside from contacting the media depot.
Still, it’s a great story which I found on Twitter
December 12th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Ethan,
To me, Kraft should be using social media (blogs, etc.)as another way to communicate with its customers. In fact, I think it makes sense for most consumer-facing companies to embrace social media, which is why I find so puzzling that Canadian companies such as Canadian Tire and Loblaws are playing in the game right now.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I couldn’t resist…
http://www.keystonemarketing.net/clients.asp?client=1
December 12th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Freshbooks is a great service and those are great guys, but damn, they sure are trying hard to milk this triscuit story.
It’s not like they sent they sent a spare kidney to the guy in fiji.
nope, a $3 box of crackers.
Is Kraft alone in wondering why this publicity stunt is newsworthy?
December 12th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I think it’s actually reactions like this that terrify these guys (the Kraft’s of the world) of wading into this space.
If they make one mis-step they’ll have bloggers hopping up and down ranting and raving about authenticity & “not-getting it” … yada yada.
“Social Media” PR for many of these guys has far more risks than benefits.
A company creating what amounts to an in joke with one of their clients rates pretty low on the scale of “global importance” - but it also sets a very low bar if they respond to future “requests” what happens when there’s a minor disaster somewhere? How could a company ever say no to anything else if they start shipping cartons of free product around for such trivial stuff?
There’s no PR benefit for Kraft here. Just look at the flack they’re getting and they haven’t done anything…
December 12th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Thomas,
The post is based on my experience with Kraft, as opposed to Freshbooks trying to milk things.
Mark
December 12th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Oops - that said. Kraft does deserve a bit of a kick in the ass for the tragically bad response (long delay & form email). That’s the real story here - but that’s just bad customer service in general….
December 12th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Interesting comments about Freshbooks trying to milk things.
I’m the guy in Fiji they sent the Triscuits to. For me, living in a place where good customer service is about as common as a snowstorm, this touch from Freshbooks was just awesome. They might has well have sent me a kidney. Business should be evolving into the kinds of personal touches represented here by Freshbooks.
I didn’t know anything about KRAFT’s response until reading Mark’s post here and I share his disappointment. That random blog posting I made about the effort Freshbooks put into making me smile resulted in an extraordinary amount of traffic on our little south pacific blog. The story obviously resonated with some people for a reason. KRAFT should have seen the value in it. I received a number of notes from people who went out to buy the product just to see if it was worth it. The verdict from the people that wrote me was a thumbs up.
jonathan
December 12th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Jonathon - I agree that the Triscuits sending was a smart PR idea and a great way for Freshbooks to build some customer loyalty etc. in a fun way.
What I don’t see is the upside/halo effect for Triscuits. They just happened to be the “prop”. There’s no reason for Kraft to wade into this from a PR perspective.
The story was company from a (almost) halfway round the world sends something unexpected and fun to client. It could have been beef jerkey or motor oil, the product didn’t matter in this case.
Hearing the story doesn’t make me want to eat triscuits, but it doesn intrigue me about Freshbooks & their customer service…
December 12th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Ryan…completely agree. The story is Freshbooks, not KRAFT.
However, if I was a marketer at KRAFT, I would take note of this story, at least. They could have gotten some residual attention for sure. The comments being made about the product were overly positive so why not fan the flames a bit? The costs of doing that and getting some viral attention would pale in comparison to the professionally produced TV spots of a smiling family enjoying their triscuits.
As it turns out, their form letter response represents the first “negative” associated with the story.