Food & Beverage
Krispy Kreme
Keep scrolling to see how Krispy Kreme drove these results
The Challenge: Create Source of Fan Engagement
As businesses and marketers understand, it’s simply not enough to generate impressions and engagement. The work put into creating meaningful interactions with customers and prospects should be thought of as an ongoing investment—not a one-off campaign. Best practice means you’re reusing those efforts to generate even more touchpoints with audiences.
Krispy Kreme’s marketing team and social media director, Kelley O’Brien, found an answer to this challenge through TrueLoyal, a user generated content (UGC) platform. For O’Brien and Krispy Kreme, UGC as a marketing practice meant they could give their brand some heart.
O’Brien described the lack of UGC for any company as a one-sided perspective that narrows the experience for customers. With TrueLoyal’s ability to maximize UGC, O’Brien knew Krispy Kreme could capture the heart of people’s experiences with the brand and bridge the gap between the digital and real world.
The Solution: Krispy Kreme Heats Up Engagement with TrueLoyal
Krispy Kreme was able to take on this engagement challenge with TrueLoyal in some creative ways that increased key metrics while simultaneously representing the warmth of its brand. One use is likely familiar to most marketers: promoting an exciting new idea quickly with limited time and resources.
Krispy Kreme’s hashtags
The key to overcoming this challenge meant combining TrueLoyal with Krispy Kreme’s hashtags. This simple but effective move allowed the company to close the gap between its users and marketing promotions. Below are some key campaign examples:
#hathathooray: A celebration of the company’s 75th anniversary, centered around workers’ iconic hats, generated great engagement. For its 78th birthday, the hashtag was reactivated as a method for entry to a contest and with TrueLoyal’s help was used to build micro-doughnuts from the participant images on landing pages.
#krispykreemelove: The love is real for Krispy Kreme as proven by fan praise. TrueLoyal’s ability to populate screens and webpages with hashtagged posts allowed Krispy Kreme to literally spread the love.
#hotlight: Krispy Kreme created a sensory experience with this highly engaging hashtag that would allow customers to know if hot doughnuts were ready to pick up.
#krispykreememoments: This hashtag generated priceless brand moments like those of customers eagerly waiting in line and helped grow their Instagram followers from 0 to 1.6 million.
An Owned Channel for Always-On UGC & Reviews
With TrueLoyal, Krispy Kreme was able to move the needle across across a wide range of marketing touchpoints and metrics. Take for instance the results from #NationalDonutDay:
- Web traffic: 25,000 sessions → 330,000 sessions
- Twitter mentions: most mentioned national brand on Twitter
The sum total of these benefits helped pave the way for new customer acquisition. Along the way, TrueLoyal’s platform offered up engagement at new levels with increased frequency and quality of content. The UGC collected led to the brand being able to show off what O’Brien described as “priceless moments.”
And it’s this last point that showcases the power of delivering UGC to customers. O’Brien told us that building brand health and alliance is something existing brands, especially long lived ones, crave. For O’Brien, increasing this brand health through social is as important as getting customers through the door.
I would say UGC can be the fundamental thread in building out a brand’s existence, presence, and harnessing all the love of a brand. With UGC, you can truly exemplify the heart and the core of what people think and believe while living the company’s mission.
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