Business community results can be game-changing when done properly
Written by Francois Gossieaux on July 21, 2008 – 11:40 am -For the second time in six months I got to listen to the Fiskateer case study at last week’s ANA Conference on Marketing Accountability. This time it was co-presented between Jay Gillespie, the VP of Marketing at Fiskars and Spike Jones, the President of Brains on Fire.
The folks at Fiskars did a lot of things right in order to build this community - they found an area of passion, scrapbooking, and they put the users at the center of their community, not their company nor their products.
In a nutshell, the Fiskateer community is a community of passionate scrapbookers who are helping one another in every aspect of the hobby - from providing social interaction guidelines for the community to finding the right tools for the job. A handful of community leaders are paid by Fiskars, all others are volunteers.
What started as a modest PR project, with a goal of recruiting 250 community members within 6 months, ended up with a movement of 5,000 passionate fiskateers in 18 months. In fact they achieved their original goal of 250 members in less than 48 hours. Another goal was for them to increase chatter by 10%, which they instead grew by 600%. They also blew past their original goal of increasing store sales by 10% and instead increased store sales by 300%.
What’s even better is that the program, which was originally funded by Fiskars at the tune of $1M, is now fully paid for by the box stores.
And just like we found with our own study on how companies leverage communities, they had some unexpected benefits from their community, including:
- The participation of the community in the R&D process
- Having the community members create better advertising than they used to
- Having community members take over much of the customer support function
- Having the community rally around the company when they had a PR crisis on their hands.
The key to success, said Fiskars’ Jay Gillespie, is to keep yourself accountable to the fans - not the company.
When companies deploy successful communities, the benefits are not level-setting; they are truly game-changing.
Posted in Marketing 2.0, Tribalization of Business |
Beeline partner Lois Kelly's book, "Beyond Buzz", won the gold medal for best marketing book in the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards, sponsored by Inc. magazine, and was also selected as one of the best business books of the year by Library Journal.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 am
My name is Cheryl Waters and I’m Fiskateer #002. As one of the original leads I didn’t know what to expect when myself, Brains on Fire, Fiskars and the three other original leads began. It was a pioneer experience but I have to tell you that it has changed my life. I love Fiskars products . . . it runs in the family . . . my grandma was a seamstress, mom a quilter and Fiskars has always been a part of our lives. But working with the company has been a complete blessing. They are a wonderful group of people who love their crafters and I’m so grateful I’m in that catagory. As well, the Fiskateers has inspired me in my crafting, life and to be a better me. It has been a priceless experience I wouldn’t trade! While I was teaching quite a bit in stores in the beginning . . . it’s now time to invest more time into the community that has been built. It was so exciting to see the community grow so quickly and I have made life time crafting friends. It has been an enriching experience!