Sweetie CRM

The Natural Confectionery Company is Cadbury’s Schweppes product line containing no artificial colours or flavours. We asked Simon Gregory of interactive specialists Weapon 7 to explain how online strategy and CRM played a part in the brand’s successful relaunch.
Turning awareness into brand engagement: or combining the power of broadcast with the power of online Our key challenge in launching The Natural Confectionery Company for Cadbury was how to ensure that we converted awareness into brand engagement and subsequent purchase.

TV ads were doing a great awareness job, each one was a wonderful Fallonesque cultural happening. In fact consumers loved the ads so much they were in danger of becoming a victim of their own success; we soon learnt that just because people liked the TV ads, it didn’t necessarily follow that they liked the brand. This meant that any ‘campaign-centric’ CRM strategy focused solely on the ads could prove counter-productive. So we treated the TV ads as an introduction to the new brand; as the start of a conversation, taking those who demonstrated an interest in them on a journey.

The indication that you were interested would probably start with online search. We listened to the online conversations prompted by the ads and encouraged people to engage with us further through social media channels including Facebook and a YouTube Channel, a web- page promoting data-capture and an on-demand TV show called Packet Life.
In each channel we provided people with further content that built on the TV ads, such as behind-the-scenes clips or an animation. If they engaged with it, we then tempted them to try a free sample and opt-in to stay in touch. The brand’s YouTube channel is here: www.youtube.com/user/natconfectioneryco
Over time we continued to deliver further expressions of the brand to our audience through a host of games, emails, applications, invitations to visit our new site and Facebook gifts (over 140,000 in the UK alone). And, where relevant, we dropped them a little note or message letting them know. Each interaction acted as another step towards brand engagement and ultimately purchase.
To date, our research suggests that when we have converted awareness to trial, whether sampled or through purchase, we have created consumers that quickly add the product to their profile of preferred sweets. Plus, we now have tens of thousands of people engaged with the brand and product keen to stay in touch. The big idea is now lots of little relevant ideas. www.naturalconfectionery.co.ukwww.weapon7.com