Friday, March 23, 2007

Wendy's Garden Salad Sensations Case Study

I looked into Wendy's Garden Sensations case study that Ketchum helped Wendy's launch back in 2002.

Wend'ys noticed a decrease in market share due to higher-end fast food restaurants offering a healthier substitute for health conscious consumers. The company knew it needed to add something to its menu to compensate for its lack of healthier items, such as salads.

Wendy's introduced Garden Salad Sensations, a line of specialty salads including: Mandarin Chicken salad, Chicken Caesar salad, Southwest Taco salad and Chicken BLT salad.

Ketchum traveled to Wendy's 36 top markets within two weeks. More than 2,000 salads were delivered to target reporters, newsrooms and morning show producers/crews. I thought this was a clever way to target food experts as well as health advocates and get them to spark interest and support Wendy's newly added salads.

Through Ketchum's strategic planning and lauch efforts, Wendys received more than 300 hits within a six-month period regarding the new salads and the media persuaded the public to try the salads (95 percent gave the new salads rave reviews, 90 percent categorized Wendy's salads among the best fast food for good helath). The majority of the same-store sales increase that amounted to 6.6 percent was from Wendy's new salads and Wendy's documented record sales weeks following the launch of the salads.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Group Audio Blogging

Voicethread.com has designed a new website that allows users to create a "voicebook" which provides audio to the website just as a blogger creates a post. This new media is called Group Audio Blogging (GAB). Bloggers can now add their own audio to their blogsites and encourage debates among other users. GAB is not limited to bloggers, however adding audio to your blog site can add a unique and positive dynamic, as well as bring more visitors to your site. Check it out!

Friday, March 2, 2007

Online Campaigning

In the 2004 elections, blogging proved to be a vital tool for online campaigning.

Campaigns and the political parties created blogs to present their views and ideas and in turn brought supporters and bloggers together.

Alex Rice states "Dean was the first candidate to use blogging, Meetups, and other innovative technology tools as part of his campaign strategy, which created a loyal grassroots network and fundraising base. Dean raised more than $20 million online, showing the fundraising power of the Internet, reinventing campaign fundraising by shifting from a few big donors to countless small donors. These new and important Internet strategies were then adopted in the John Kerry and George W. Bush campaigns, along with political parities and candidates on the state and local level." (http://www.campaignsonline.org/reports/1104.html)

With the growing use of the Internet and all that it has to offer, online campaigning has received a lot of attention.

Hillary Clinton announced her candiacy for the 2008 presidential race with a video posted on her website (http://hillaryclinton.com) titled, "I'm In." Since that announcement she has posted videos titled "Let the Conversation Begin." By setting up her campaign as a conversation, she has invited bloggers to share their ideas on how to make a change.

The evolution of blogging is remarkable. To find out more on the 2008 presidential candidates, the Bivings Report takes a look at the candidates' websites and the growing use of the Internet as a means for political news. (http://www.bivingsreport.com/2007/whos-it-gonna-be-2008-presidential-candidate-websites/)