more on the ingredient community
In a previous post we discussed the opportunity to begin creating a community that starts with acquiring twitter followers who are interested in Acme’s ingredient based recipes. Lets say one of the ingredients Acme sells is Soy protein. Well, a few ideas have been percolating since we wrote that post.
This morning, I stumbled across a banner ad on MSN.com for the SoyConnection.com (http://www.soyconnection.com/health_nutrition/banner.php). Obviously, I followed it to see where it would take me. As you might expect, it took me to a landing page for a website which is valuable because it is indirectly helping Acme’s marketing goals.
The intrinsic value of soyconnection.com to Acme is really two fold:
-
their website helps promote the benefits of soy
-
it acquires “opt-in” consumer information – which may allow them to do more email marketing
The untapped value of soyconnection.com however, is they are attracting consumers who are interested in learning more about soy. Unfortunately (or fortunately for Acme depending upon how you look at it) they are not leveraging the real value from attracting these consumers.
There is a wonderful book called “CrowdSourcing – Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business” by Jeff Howe. It’s an enlightening read, especially if you are in marketing or if you are a business leader. The premise of this book is tightly aligned with the position advocated for Acme. Simply stated, it looks to help brands realize the power from creating communities that are allowed to interact with each other. As long as the “conversation” is good, interesting, and popular (soy, is one of those conversations) the community will interact with each other and then begin to take on a life of it’s own. Of course, there are a number of strategies and best practices for building communities, but it is entirely possible to create this community and it would be highly valuable to a company like Acme.
Recall the conversation about Harley-Davidson and the value they achieved by creating a community. Now imagine a community that has been created around the Soy “conversation”. Imagine the members interacting with each other on relevant topics like recipe sharing, discussions for consumers on the health benefits of soy, discussions for health professionals, etc. Now imagine Acme, as well as some of their employees, as prominent members of the community providing relevant and authority based interaction. Acme as a first-mover in this community then has just initiated competitive differentiation.
It is also noteworthy that the press will also begin to look to this community (because it’s a community and not an individual or entity) for information as well.
So to round this all out, there are a number of ways to build the Ingredient community. Acme could take on specific techniques (like the Twitter example previously discussed), and a potential partnership with the soyconnection.com and others could yield a large and powerful community.
