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Sara Lee Turned to WOM, Allrecipes.com to Launch Bread

When Sara Lee launched its Soft & Smooth Whole Grain Wheat Bread the company started a word of mouth campaign and turned to AllRecipes.com for a partnership.

“Moms have no control when kids are out of their sight, except for sack lunches,” said Esmee Williams, VP of Marketing for AllRecipes.com, speaking at WOMMA’s conference this week in San Francisco. That food, she acknowledges, may be eaten, or it may end up in trashcans. Nonetheless, Sara Lee wanted to influence sack lunches.

So the team began an “online taste test panel” just before a new school year began, according to WOMMA’s Wombat blog.

An invitation was advertised in areas of the site “where we tend to find influencers,” Esmee explained. (To the team implementing the campaign, an influencer was someone on the site who tends to submit content and offer opinions.) They were asked to fill out a survey. Those who fit the target profile (moms with school age children) were given coupons for 70% off a loaf of the bread. Others were given a coupon for 40% off.

Those who agreed to be on the “taste test” panel were given a microsite where they could talk about the product, tell what they thought about it, submit recipes using the product, or tell a friend. They were also asked to come back and participate in a survey.

The campaign also included: ads on the AllRecipe.com website, TV ads, FSI coupons, and store displays

“We looked at the community section of our site and really thought through how many influencers we thought we could get and we thought we could get 5,000 people to sign up,” said Julie Dey, Director of Advertising Services for AllRecipes.com.

They got well over 15,000 people to participate, most in their target market.

Seventy percent of the audience downloaded the coupon, and 40 percent redeemed it. “We project that we reached over 100,000 people just through WOM alone, and on average each participant told 6.6 others about the program,” Julie said.