The power of physical media demonstrated by chocolate

As I hungrily opened my Gousto box to see what I'd mistakenly chosen for the week meals after playing russian roulette and missing my choices for the week, I opened the box to reveal a 180g bar of Tony's Chocolonely just for being a loyal and valued customer of Gousto's and sticking by them, which was a lovely treat after a day of home-schooling.

As a consumer I'd never heard of the brand before, I was intrigued by the Willy Wonka looking outfit and more intrigued, that as a chocolate connoisseur I'd never heard of them. As a curious marketer and self confessed data geek, I also wanted to know what the impact for both Gousto and Tony's Chocolonely was in sending such a small token of appreciation for their customers via the physical medium of chocolate.

Google Trends

Unsurprisingly Tony's Chocolonely have seen a huge spike search trends from the partnership which has climbed significantly since the middle of January showing they are gaining presence and awareness.

Social Listening (Linkfluence)

Post volume

Undoubtedly a spike in social mentions driven by consumers receiving their Gousto boxes this week, receiving them like I have, and being so impressed they felt the need to take to social media to share the love. This equates to roughly 6% of people engaging digitally that would have received a Gousto box yesterday in sharing across their social channels.

Diving Deeper

• Twitter was the stand out platform for sharing, and has been across the month.
• Unsurprisingly the brand term was the highest performing hashtag, but one of the more interesting ones was #slavery which is a nod to their mission statement which is make the chocolate industry completely slave free, which incidentally is why they opt for an unequally divided formation of their chocolate bar, to remind their consumers of the current inequality in the chocolate industry, it's not great for sharing but its a visual reminder that you're left to ponder.
• The most prevalent emoji used was the chocolate bar.
• Overwhelming the sentiment around the chocolate in the box was positive. Their was still a few negative sentiments, but in looking at the data, the negatives were more around the consumer missing a garlic bulb than being unhappy with the free chocolate.

Organic Search

Organic search volumes through Semrush over the last 2 weeks have increased by 18% as a result of people engaging with the brand socially.

Gousto

Whilst it seems like an extremely generous approach for Gousto to give away a bar to each customer at an RRP of £3.98 (which would have cost them around £750,000), in reality its probably cost them far less than that or nothing at all, and will benefit them as well, through an increase in customer loyalty and free PR, contributing to an increase in organic search and promotion by word of mouth.

Ask the data

When looking at Google Trends, social listening and organic search data as we did for Tony's Chocolonely there were notable week on week changes against all data points, so the impact on Gousto was limited in that respect.

Brand Partnerships / Product Sampling

Edit's sister agency Relish are the market leaders in brand to hand marketing, research shows that simply encouraging consumers to try a product is the most effective way to see if they like your product enough to buy it at full price.

Receiving a product sample could increase purchases by 300%, but not only that, sampling helps amplify your multi marketing campaign and uplift the decision-making process, it also generates conversations on social media as has been show by this campaign.

Referrals links through blogs

Much like this one containing 8 links its free PR, which given they have been slightly off their normally high standards with missing ingredients over the last couple of weeks, it helps to combat any negative sentiments.

Digital Engagement

Research shows that customers can feel a wide range of emotions, both positive and negative, before deciding to buy. Many factors contribute to these emotions, from the atmosphere of a bricks and mortar store to the intention behind the purchase. A marketing strategy that elicits a predominantly positive emotional response from customers is one that engages the sense of touch. When a customer interacts with a promotional item or a product, it affects their mood, behaviour and spending habits. Science clearly shows that – despite the rise of the digital age and eCommerce – the power of touch still has a powerful impact on the customer, this unfortunately is not something you can deliver with an e-mail, native display ad or a search engine. You can't put a chocolate bar in an e-mail or create a genuine moment of surprise when opening an e-mail (we've all had those e-mails where you've won a new car, only to find out you haven't).

With this, its no wonder that brands like Gousto are turning to print, even for customer retention purposes as it provides a demonstrable uplift when trying to reactivate churned customers. Our partner Paper Planes have recently published a paper on how print and direct mail particularly can compliment your marketing automation strategy. JICMail also has a treasure trove of data proving how direct mail and door drop interactions have shown double digit growth over lockdown with more people being in home and interacting with mail, the most recent release also shows a 33% year on year growth in web visits attributed to mail.

“It’s no secret that marketing budgets have come under more scrutiny than ever during the pandemic driven economic downturn. At the same time the nation’s thirst for online shopping has continued to grow unabated. This makes the measurement of digital effects and the correct attribution of digital traffic to offline channels such as advertising mail, all the more important as marketers look for an accurate read on advertising efficiency and effectiveness,

Ian Gibbs,

Director and Data Leadership and Learning at JICMAIL.

Its easy to get sucked into the sexiness and instantaneousness of Facebook and Instagram with the access to more quantitative data than you could shake a stick at, instant data extraction from the platforms to help decisioning and campaign optimisation on the fly. The key is understand the connection and interplay between channels and the role of primer and harvester media channels, the platforms and last click attribution won't give them the credit they are due, but as the data has proven in this example, all the interactions through social (and this blog) was driven by a stimulus from a delighted and happy Gousto customer wanting the share their experience with the world, so next time you think about what media channels to use in your campaign, remember the saying, what came first the chocolate bar or the egg?