Graco’s social media success story

Posted by Blog Council Staff on August 22, 2008

Gavin O’Malley, MediaPost, writes about Graco’s successful social media campaign.

According to O’Malley, “18 months, ago, Converseon and Graco Baby first begin “listening” to the conversation–for several months before proactively doing anything–to develop a clear understanding of the landscape in the parenting category.”

“Based on the information they gathered, the agency and clients formed a strategy to make Graco an accepted and welcomed brand in the online parenting conversation. They also attempted to “humanize” the Graco brand, and to build lasting relationships with the community by demonstrating that behind the brand are concerned and engaged parents.”

“Additional “conversation mining” found a robust, active parenting group that was largely resistant to commercial efforts to engage them. A core thrust of Graco’s strategy was, thus, not to force the brand into the conversations, but instead create and foster environments to facilitate relationships between influentials, and then get invited to the conversation.”

“The core components of that campaign included a series of Graco blogger “Get-Together” events across the country to lay the groundwork for the launch of a corporate Graco parenting blog authored by a team of Graco employees. The blog was designed to focus on “parent first” issues, stories, advice. The blogging effort was supported with the complementary use of other social media tools, including Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.”

“As a result of these efforts, online chatter about Graco nearly doubled and positive sentiment increased 15%–68% positive in 2007 to 83% positive this year. Also, the blog now regularly attracts thousands of unique visitors.”

Read the whole story at MediaPost. Thanks, WOMMA for the tip.