We launched two new websites a few weeks ago for one of our most important clients, Hormel Foods. The two sites are significant because they represent a fundamental shift in how the company is committed to listening to stakeholders to learn what THEY want, and are truly using digital to create an experience as opposed to just deliver information.
The sites, HormelFoods.com and HormelFoodsRecipes.com used to be part of one big jumbled corporate site that included all of the corporate stakeholder content along with all of the brand information and a recipes library for consumers. This was probably fine in 1999, but the company is growing quickly and aggressively expanding in many different directions under the leadership of CEO Jeff Ettinger. Hormel Foods conducted research to learn what all of their stakeholders wanted in a company web presence, which was very instructive but not necessarily surprising. (Corporate audiences don’t want to be bogged down with all of the consumer “fluff” but they do want to know it exists. Consumers want to access corporate content on request, but are far more interested in recipes, etc.) I love all of my clients (I know, insert kissy noise here), but I am especially proud of Hormel for this effort because it represented more work, more time, more money, and more maintenance into the future - but they did it anyway.
These two websites are in their infancy as the company has big plans to evolve them and add numerous features over the coming months, but I think they represent a tremendous step forward for Hormel Foods and a significantly improved experience for the many people they need to talk with. It took a lot of dedicated people at Hormel Foods, under the guidance of Corporate Communications VP Julie Craven, and a lot of talent from my agency led by Bryan Oakley and Steve Alberts, but it was well worth the effort. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Congratulations team!