In France, Carambar is a well-known brand. Loved by the children and appreciated by the parents, this brand is famous for the jokes which accompany the brand’s candies. Even if the Carambar’s jokes aren’t always funny, the USP of Carambar is clear: With Carambar, spend a relaxing time eating a good candy and laughing about a joke.
In 2013, the brand created a buzz with a false announcement: they announced that, from now on, they planned to replace the traditional jokes by educational games in the candies. Carambar’s customers and media were immediately alarmed, panicked and desperately lost. Indeed, everybody was asking why the brand decided that. The fans have even created a fan page to beg the brand not to abandon its famous jokes… In less than 5 days, everybody was aware of the brand’s announcement and everybody was talking about that.
When the brand and its agency decided to confess via an Youtube video, that one gathered 93% of “Like” and only 7% of “Unlike”. In total, the campaign has generated:
- 13 000 additional fans on the brand’s Facebook fan page / 87% of positive comments on the fan page
- 50 000 tweets which allowed to rank the brand in the “TT” (trending topics of Twitter) six times
With such a media hit and such positive reactions after the reveal phase, the Carambar campaign is a brilliant case study of successful buzz!
Few questions must come to your mind: What is exactly a “buzz” and how did Carambar manage the campaign to have those positive results? “That is the question!!”
BUZZ MARKETING
According to the specialized blog SearchCRM.com, buzz marketing can be defined like that:
“Buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique that attempts to make each encounter with a consumer appear to be a unique, spontaneous personal exchange of information instead of a calculated marketing pitch choreographed by a professional advertiser. Historically, buzz marketing campaigns have been designed to be very theatrical in nature. The advertiser reveals information about the product or service to only a few "knowing" people in the target audience. By purposely seeking out one-on-one conversations with those who heavily influence their peers, buzz marketers create a sophisticated word-of-mouth campaign where consumers are flattered to be included in the elite group of those "in the know" and willingly spread the word to their friends and colleagues.”
What is important to remember here is the following words: viral marketing technique, word-of-mouth campaign & influence their peers.
Nowadays, consumers are less and less influenced by advertisements. They are constantly submitted to brand messages. Consequence: they don’t pay attention anymore to traditional ads. In the other hand, they are more likely to listen to influencers (relatives, bloggers…). Buzz marketing is based on these peer-to-peer relations. By revealing information to only few “knowing” people in the target audience, these influencers will spread the word to their peers and generate spontaneous conversations about the brand. If the influencers are well chosen, only few days are needed to spread the word among the brand’s target audience. This is why we say that buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique since it is spontaneous and very fast. Another important characteristic of buzz marketing is the price of such campaign. Indeed, since it is a campaign based on word-of-mouth, it’s very cheap for a company to settle a buzz campaign. For example, for the Carambar campaign, in five days, the brand did the results of a year campaign and with a budget of an activation wave …
Finally, the most complicated part in implementing a buzz campaign is the conception part, when thinking about the buzz mechanics.
BUZZ MECHANICS
To create the buzz, the Carambar’s agency (Fred&Farid) used three powerful levers: social media, PR and false information materials.
On March 20th 2013, Carambar announced on its social pages (Facebook & Twitter) that a big news will be announced in the next days, changing the brand’s history. In the same time, selected journalists received at their offices a school bag containing a press kit. Few minutes later, the journalists began to react on their social networks (Facebook, Twitter & Instagram): they told to their followers that Carambar decided to stop its jokes in favor of educational games. By sharing the news, the journalists also shared their opinions: astonishment, perplexity and big disappointment. The buzz is on the road…
The journalists had waited for the evening to confirm the news after contacting Kraft Foods Europe PR department. Indeed, they were suspicious about this information since the joke day (April, 1st) was going to come in few days.
The next day, the brand confirmed again the rumors: it published on its Twitter account the new corporate ad (video) which emphasizes again on the new brand positioning. Thus, media (TV, newspaper, radio) relay the information to their public audience. At that moment, all the French people are convinced that Carambar has definitively changed its brand promise…
The reveal takes place on March 25th 2013: the brand announced on its Twitter account that “The end of jokes… #itwasajoke”!
Thus, social media and PR were used to spread the word and create a “Carambar movement” within the media scope and false information materials were used to erase the last doubts from the media and the consumers.
References:
