How Ben & Jerry’s Uses Social Media to Launch a New Flavor

Keith Toh put it really well when he described a recent social media push from Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream...

Imagine Ben & Jerry’s famed cow mascot Woody, storming into your office moo-ing and dancing with you while dishing out scoops of their new ice-cream flavor, Clusterfluff (yes, I know the name is quite interesting). The next thing you know, the entire office is Clusterfluffed.

As part of Clusterfluff’s launch in Singapore, the folks from RIOT brought the Cowmobile to Singapore for the first time ever. The Cowmobile will then go to specific locations based on “mooo” requests from fans on Facebook.

Over a period of 5 days (4 – 8 April), all fans needed to do was to Like Ben & Jerry’s Facebook page and “mooo” their request via a specially created application for the Cowmobile to request for a stopover at their office, school or home.

More “moos”, more chance.

In just 5 days, 784 requests were made and the amount of Facebook Likes increased by more than 28% (1,412). Twitter followers increased by over 15% (155) with 186 mentions and re-tweets. The Cowmobile went to 31 different locations and gave out a total of 5,960 free scoops of Clusterfluff.

Riding on that momentum, Ben & Jerry’s 12 of April Free Cone Day resulted in an additional 592 Likes on Facebook and 270 mentions and re-tweets on Twitter. The massive amount of re-tweets propelled the Free Cone Day message to appear as a Top Tweet on Twitter’s homepage.

The Free Cone Day came with a good cause as members of the public were encouraged to donate their dime for the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS). A total of over $14,000 was collected that day.

Based on RIOT’s statistics, for the campaign month of April vs March, Ben & Jerry experienced an

• Increase of 912% in new Facebook likes


• Over 446,000 impressions (+552%)


• +1490% in post feedback


• +486 Twitter followers

3 Top Tips for Twitter

Are you using Twitter well? Here are a few simple rules that one should follow in order to have more success on Twitter.

Be present.

Make sure you are present with your Twitter presence.
There's nothing worse than seeing half a message in a Tweet that's been automatically generated via a Facebook status update. Twitter and Facebook have different languages, allow different length messages, have different tagging options, one has hashtags and the other doesn't. Linking your Twitter account with your Facebook Page can look lazy. Be present in the platform when you're using it, that way you can better use the features for each. At most, you might like to add an automated direct message that goes to new followers, but that should be the end of the automation.

Be consistent.

Spread your tweets over the week instead of posting all on one day.
If you only have a certain amount of time you can dedicate to checking Twitter, spread it out over the week instead of using the equivalent time in one day - for instance, do half an hour each day instead of three hours one day of the week. It will make you look more active, allow you to reply to people in a timely fashion, and give you more opportunity to engage users at different times of the week. You should be able to fit all of this into half-hour sessions over the course of a week.

Be accountable.

Twitter is a public space.
Anything you say is this space reflects on you, your brand, your grandma and your dog. And this can be held against you. Be careful what you say before you press "Tweet".

Pepsi's new Social Vending Machine

First they brought us the Pepsi Refresh Project, where the public could receive a share of $20 million to promote a new idea that would have a positive impact on the community, state or nation. These were funds that would usually have been spent on advertising during one Superbowl. That's a big statement from a big company to become more socially responsible.

Now the beverage giant has brought us another new social frontier, social vending - a real vending machine that is social media-enabled.

PepsiCo's Social Vending Machine, announced last week, lets users send free soft drink to their friends.

“Our vision is to use innovative technology to empower consumers and create new ways for them to engage with our brands, their social networks and each other at the point of purchase,” said Mikel Durham, Chief Innovation Officer at PepsiCo Foodservice. “Social Vending extends our consumers’ social networks beyond the confines of their own devices and transforms a static, transaction-oriented experience into something fun and exciting they’ll want to return to, again and again.”

This could potentially see the remodeling of vending machines globally.

This video (although a little lengthy) shows just how it would work.



Would you use a social vending machine?

EB