Kraft Canada was a different story when Duri Al-Ajrami, the director of social marketing for Ogilvy Canada, approached them. He knew that the power of social media would work incredibly well in getting the word out about the new Tassimo single-cup hot beverage brewing system that Kraft was about to launch in Canada.

The easy way to do things would have been to simply do what any company always has done and invest millions in a TV ad campaign and hope that within all the noise somebody would hear you. It always baffles me to see companies fight for better ways to air commercials when consumers are thinking about better ways to avoid commercials.

Duri persisted with the client and was willing to prove that it would work. Ogilvy and Kraft monitored the conversation about coffee in general, their special brand, and their competitors. Their goal was to exponentially grow the conversation about this new machine without clouding the airways with unwanted commercials.

Due to budget constraints, they were unable to use mass TV advertising and instead purchased one thousand machines to give away to influential people in social media in Canada. I was one of those people.

The way that I was approached is a lesson in itself on how to approach bloggers or influential social media people. After using some tools through Radian6, a company that identified who the key people were, Duri sent individual personalized e-mails to each person. I get many e-mails from people who want me to review their books—scratch that—promote their books, and never get more than a form letter. Duri was different. His e-mail was personal to me because we both live in the same town, and he mentioned a few things I was talking about online, which showed me he actually did some research. He was upfront with me in the e-mail, letting me know he was getting in touch with certain influencers in social media and was wondering if I would like one of the new Tassimo coffee systems for free. In return, if I wanted to, I could review it honestly or tweet about it, and although most companies wouldn’t like it, he requested that I be as honest as I could. Not one to pass up free stuff, because if I don’t like it then it would make a great regift, I said sure, send her over. We also continued the conversation over e-mail and made plans at a later date to have lunch and discuss marketing in general because we both had a passion for social media.

A week or so later, I not only received the machine but nine different boxes of “T DISCS” that contained different types of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate so I could try them all out. You have to understand something here—I may be the laziest man in the history of all time. I don’t like making pots of coffee mostly because of the effort and how it goes stale really quickly. When I looked at this machine and how it promised to make great coffee quickly one cup at a time, I knew I had found my new best friend. Sure enough, this thing rocked the Casbah. It actually ended up reducing the amount of time I went out to pick up coffee because it was so good and quick. So, of course, I started tweeting about it as did many others.

The following week I received another e-mail from Duri. It wasn’t an e-mail requesting that I review the machine as you might think. You know the old “okay, we gave you something, now give us something” type of e-mail; he was actually writing to ask me to pick 10 other people who I thought would appreciate receiving a machine as well. Now I am Santa Claus! He made it clear in the e-mail that the people I recommended were not going to be just suggestions—the 10 I named would all get a machine themselves. The only request was that they also have a social media presence.⁵⁵ So, as you can probably guess, the people I selected were ecstatic and were really anticipating receiving their machines.

The strategy was brilliant on many different levels, but the key to it working was having a great product to talk about. The machine is unique and buzz-worthy—I don’t think this method would work as well with toilet paper.⁵⁶ The buzz about the machine was not only incredible, it was measurable. Right before the campaign started, in October 2009, Tassimo was being talked about only 0.04 percent of the time in conversations around coffeemakers and coffee social habits in Canada. By December 9, Tassimo had reached 12.6 percent of conversations, being mentioned almost 5,000 times online versus around 50 times before the campaign. Their two competitors, which stayed with classic old-school marketing, had numbers that remained flat in the conversation, no increase or decrease, both having less than 1 percent the entire time.

Overall sales have been higher than expected for the machine and the coffee discs. I am sure that if you actually look closely I account for half of them. ☺ My kitchen is filled with boxes of “T DISCS”, although my son is tired of daddy asking if he wants to try a new latte flavor that just came out. But he won’t pass up another hot chocolate.

The biggest knock on social media is not being able to get measurable results, but as you can see, you not only can get real results, you can generate real conversations.