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!

E-marketer reported on a study conducted by the Deloitte Consumer Product Group that indicated that consumers are accessing and trust consumer-generated product reviews. The data is very convincing, indicating that 99% of respondents find consumer-generated reviews somewhat or very credible. However, only 62% read consumer-generated reviews.  I find it surprising that that 99% find the information credible but only 62% actually access in the information, but either way 62% is a big number. The eMarketer article states, “More than eight in 10 respondents in the Deloitte study who read consumer reviews said that the reviews had affected their buying intentions: either they became more determined to buy the product or they changed their minds and bought a different product altogether.”

As if we needed more proof, this is yet another demonstration of the big stick that consumers now carry, and further proof that marketers need to participate in online conversations with consumers.  Knowing that online reviews are influencing other consumers makes them a critical source of marketing data.  Talk about immediate and actionable feedback. Marketers need to track online feedback, and have a great opportunity to use it to facilitate real-time branding and even impact product development and potentially business operations. CPG companies have it pretty good being able to get this feedback.  I wish we had a system like this for agencies!