Hopefully, you have the knowledge on how to mix up a batch of frozen cosmos on your own. Because not any of the major vodka brands – not Stoli, Absolut, Smirnoff, Svedka, Grey Goose nor Skyy – will tell you how to make one.  In fact, Absolut is the only of these brands to provide any frozen cocktail recipes whatsoever – and while you can mysteriously learn how to make frozen margaritas and daiquiris (neither of which contain vodka) and 19 variations of cosmos with different Absolut flavors from various Absolut platforms including their forward-thinking Drinkspiration app, there is not one frozen cosmo recipe to be found. Of course, it is understandable why a premium spirits brand, such as a Grey Goose, wouldn’t develop frozen cocktail recipes: if you’re pouring a high quality, high cost ingredient into your sugary, too-cold-to-really-taste beverage, you’re wasting it. On the other hand, if a consumer wants to turn their priciest bottle of hooch into a boozy Slurpee, shouldn’t your brand be there to help them achieve their drinky desires?

As brands become content publishers, it’s imperative that liquor brands learn to think seasonally.  A food magazine would never dream of not having recipes especially suited to the flavors and weather (not to mention the spirit, no pun intended) of Thanksgiving, Christmas or the Memorial Day/4th of July/Labor Day social summer season. Food publications know that consumers are becoming locavores, and therefore taking seasonality into account in their eating habits, at ever increasing rates.  The foodservice industry knows it, also: the use of “local” in restaurant marketing has climbed 13% in the past year.  And it’s not just chefs who are thinking locally: the trendiest mixologists have joined their kitchen-dwelling brethren in embracing seasonal cocktail programs and showing off the finest, freshest flavors in their concoctions. Even T.G.I.Friday’s is doing it!

Anticipating and embracing the needs of your consumer is, after all, a basic necessity in business. Conversations in social media are about the moment, and if you have nothing timely to contribute, you’re left out of the discussion. Ignoring whole events or seasons only increases the chances that no one will be serving your spirit in the punch bowl or pitcher at their big holiday bash.  From a gin toddy to, yes, a frozen cosmo, seasonally-suitable cocktails are an easy way to vary the conversation around your brand and create opportunities for party-givers (born influencers) to provide you with some old-fashioned “What is in this punch? You have to give me the recipe!” word-of-mouth marketing.

Of course, thinking seasonally means you will have to adapt your recipe content strategy throughout the year to stay relevant. Dedicating yourself to year-round recipe content creation and publication will educate and engage your audience more, the way Patron is with their Patron Cocktail Lab on Facebook. While it’s odd that the app exists on its own page and not the brand’s pages, the app itself combines education (the brand – often via guest mixologists who act as judges of the challenge – provides new recipes built around the theme of the current challenge), UGC content (fans upload their own recipe creation inspired by the theme), hints with the viral (voting period nominates the finalists) and rewards (the brand picks a winner from the finalists and awards them branded swag).

Year-round recipe content creation will also allow you to respond quickly to mixology trends as well as to the greater cultural zeitgeist. On both her final season as well as the reality television show about her final season, Oprah, her best friend Gayle King and Oprah staffers are often seen and heard enjoying and extolling the pleasures of their (minty) version of a Moscow Mule, Oprah’s new favorite cocktail.  Fans often Tweet about how they are drinking classic cocktail while they watch the show, and if you do an internet search for a Moscow Mule recipe, the top article is from Oprah.com.  A year-round cocktail program would have saved you from missing an opportunity for your brand to leap on the great O bandwagon.

Any newspaper or magazine editor will tell you that it’s not the big stories that generate the most consistent traffic and engagement: it’s the recipes. Recipes are king: Google even created a recipe search engine just to harness the power of the insatiable hunger of the masses for useful, creative or ridiculously indulgent recipes.  Spirits brands are in a unique position: most other beverages, be it beer or soda or energy drinks, don’t need to educate the consumer: their products are self-contained experiences.  But check out the Facebook pages of Oreo and Ritz: products that are great on their own, but as equally good – and useful – as building block ingredients in a bigger culinary experience.  Ask anyone who’s ever used Oreo cookies in a crust or Ritz crackers in a casserole.  Educating and engaging consumers on how to incorporate your product (a product they clearly enjoy, as they have invited you into their Facebook newsfeed or Twitter timeline) into more areas of their life will only help sell more product. If liquor brands step-up their recipe programs, perhaps one day Paula Deen will ride a bottle of their booze – instead of a stick of butter – into internet meme history.

Last week you learned a valuable lesson (no, not that Oprah is queen – we already knew that). You learned, hopefully, not to underestimate the power of Word of Mouth.

To recap, for those who haven’t been stampeded in one of your locations within the past week…

You as a brand, interested in dipping you toes into the healthier side and challenging the “F” that is the center of your acronym (you are brave!), decided to launch an online coupon for your new “Kentucky Grilled Chicken” line and seed it with the ever so subtle and non-influential (ha!) @Oprah.

The coupon was for two free pieces of grilled chicken, two sides and a biscuit to anyone who downloaded and printed it within a two-day period.  By your brand’s own analysis and admission, according to your spokesperson and Ad Age however, it wasn’t the Big O who caused the premature canceling of the promotion and in-store riots, it was the WOM-driven sharing of the promotion.

According to this very informative review of Chicken-Gate in Ad Age, KFC/KGC banked on big Oprah numbers. You took O’s projections for number of coupons based on other offers from her show and then subsequently doubled them.  You estimated about 10.5 million coupons were downloaded, which you could have handled. But then, the kicker comes in – in what I can only believe to be an obvious twist of fate without unique codes and a system that can detect them, the coupons were photocopied and shared from friend to fast food loving friend.

Adding mega fuel to the grill, you apparently didn’t properly brief all your chicken purveyors.  You see, my non-Yum Brand enthusiasts, KFC is not only company-owned – there are franchisees across the country (and it is a recession). And they aren’t giving you their chicken without Colonel Sanders reimbursing them. So they do what all people trying to curb costs in a harsh economic climate would do – act completely unaware and utterly unwilling to accept the coupons. At least that is what has allegedly happened several reported scenarios that we have learned about thanks to our friends at Consumerist who are always clucking around the latest promotional scandal.

All of this adds up to a public relations disaster with consumers now pacified with a free Pepsi (really KFC, not even a drumstick or two? or better yet how about a Dr. Pepper?) left angry and annoyed.

Believing that you  hadn’t learned the Starbucks lesson in the inevitable WOM of coupons seems unrealistic. I can’t help but believe that you WANTED this mega success turned disaster of too much consumer interest to happen. The amount of precedence (see below) makes your unawareness just not seem likely.

And this could have been deemed a total and utter success, if you just would have set better rules of engagement.

Oh, KFC… If only you had handled it better – with unique trackable codes or printing system, some type of CRM integration (which would have given you more measurable results and consumer qualification for a deeper relationship marketing after the fact – building loyalty with your new grilled friends) or when the chicken hit the fan, with a better crisis plan in place.

As I am convinced you know, with downloadable coupons, the ability for it to spiral, especially in a recession and for a FULL MEAL is inevitable. Consumers live and breathe a brand throwing them a free buck.

But have no fear, KFC, a few of your friends have made just as big of a mess of things as you have. If only you had heeded their example.

DR PEPPER

Dr Pepper said it would give everyone in the country a free soda if Guns N’ Roses released its much anticipated album “Chinese Democracy” before the end of the year.  This promotion culminated in the band’s lawyers getting nasty with the brand stating that G ‘n R are “outraged at the treatment of their fans and the American public in general” after Dr. Pepper’s site couldn’t handle the traffic and repeatedly crashed when they attempted to honor their promise.

After mega backlash in the blogosphere for seeming to be unprepared for the consumer response, Dr Pepper extended the offer for a few more days, but continued to receive tons of criticism as a result of the incident. Note to Dr. Pepper: if you would have offered us all a partial refund for the album (what a let down it was) all would have been forgiven

SUBWAY

Your footlong friends Subway did away with their iconic and beloved (by sub fans, not by me) stamp loyalty program that was born way back in the 1980s after (duh) realizing that there might be some fraud going on both with consumers and internally with their franchisees with counterfit stamps and cards.

The breaking point? A roll of the stamps being sold on eBay.

I think they’re redeeming themselves with the big Chuck promotion, though. I’m all about the Save Chuck bandwagon. Maybe you could spin yours into saving Lipstick Jungle? Or Kings? I love both of those programs. I’d be happy to help. I bet Brooke Shields and Ian McShane could get behind some grilled chicken.

QUIZNO’s

In other sub disasters, earlier this year, your grilled sub friends, Quizno’s ran into some trouble when they announced their million sub giveaway (aka free sandwich) (see a pattern here?)  The problem, which seems like it might be a bit of yours also, was many of the company’s franchises didn’t participate in the “million sub giveaway” leading to mega consumer backlash.

It is unclear if they ever truly hit that magic million number.

And, the ultimate king of coupon PR disaster is of course, your friends from the land of eternal rain, Starbucks.

STARBUCKS

Trumping all of the above, your Seattle friends ran into a class-action suit after they tried a free coffee promotion way back in 2006. Starbucks emailed printable coupons for free iced coffee drinks to employees urging them to pass the coupons on to friends and family. Obviously, their friends & family hit the fabulous “FORWARD” button and the promotion got a bit out of hand.

After 38-days Starbucks announced that they would no longer honor the coupons.

So, in summary, my friends in mashed potatoes & chicken, I am suggesting that you curb this crisis with some innovation. Do a promotion that honors and activates your influencers.  Use them as the spark that fires up the grilled fire, in a positive, trackable, and controlled manner.  Rally around them to introduce your new health-conscious option.

You will spark word of mouth and have a demonstrated ROI that makes your loyalists, your new friends in all things grilled, the blogosphere, AND your franchisees happy and full.

Need an agency to help you out? This is right up our alley. Drop me a line.

Your friend in all things grilled, mashed & gravy covered,

Sarah

Social capital can be best defined as an “investment in social relations with expected returns in marketplace.” It deals with the value of an individual’s social network/connections.

For example, let’s say you have a great new product that you’d love to have Oprah talk about on her show (who wouldn’t!). It’s safe to say that Oprah’s social capital is much more valuable than yours or mine – she has a worldwide audience of millions and is one of the wealthiest people in the US with connections to a who’s who of celebrities, business leaders and politicians – so it would be extremely difficult to gain access to her connections/spheres of influence.

Social currency is a term used to describe the value of exchange of information. In a nutshell, social currency acts as an “icebreaker” and is ammunition for conversation. It can come in many forms such as a funny joke, a stock tip, a funny viral video, or juicy gossip, i.e., “I know something you don’t know” – it makes someone look good in a social context and buys respect and admiration. Oprah would happily mention your great new product on her show if she felt the social currency it provided would be of value to her audience and make her look “in the know.” “Water cooler” TV shows work because those who watch them are “in the know” while others feel left out.

Remember the first time someone sent you a link to Subservient Chicken? You probably felt special, like you were privy to something no one else knew about. You quickly emailed the link out to your friends, family and co-workers. Then the mainstream media picked up on it, and soon your inbox was flooded with “check this out” emails! The value of the social currency dropped significantly since it had become old news.

So, how does this all relate to word of mouth and your company, product or service? When developing a word of mouth strategy you need to factor in the social capital of those you are trying to engage/reach (are you trying to reach hip, cool Gen Y-ers, or simply trying to reach people looking for free stuff to try out?) as well as the value of the social currency you can offer them (is your brand/product/service itself remarkable?), or can you provide some level of inside access/content/information which would be of value to your most passionate, outspoken customers and/or potential ones?

Candidates in major political contests are commonly endorsed by other politicians, interest groups and celebrities. Prior to the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary, Barack Obama was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, a celebrity with a proven track record of influencing her fans’ commercial decisions. In this paper, we use geographic differences in subscriptions to O! – The Oprah Magazine and the sale of books Winfrey recommended as part of Oprah’s Book Club to assess whether her endorsement affected the Primary outcomes. We find her endorsement had a positive effect on the votes Obama received, increased the overall voter participation rate, and increased the number of contributions received by Obama. No connection is found between the measures of Oprah’s influence and Obama’s success in previous elections, nor with underlying local political preferences. Our results suggest that Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for approximately 1,000,000 additional votes for Obama.

The full paper (with lots of cool equations) can be found HERE.

Disclaimer: the point of this post was to simply address the level of influence certain personalities have over consumers and is not an endorsement of any particular party or candidate