Peppermint Bark and the Social Experience

During the first week of January 2010, I had my very first taste of peppermint bark. I'm not a big fan of candy canes, so the idea of peppermint+ bark was not particularly appealing to me.

But it seemed like I was seeing it everywhere. Martha Stewart has a recipe for making this yourself. And as with all her projects, she showed a really pretty picture of the final product on her website. Every time I went to Trader Joe's I saw the boxes of peppermint bark on the shelves.

So over this past week, I decided to take the plunge and try the one by Trader Joe's. I've never been so wrong about a candy in my life! I am absolutely in love with peppermint bark right now.

(image courtesy of houseoffowler.com)

In fact, I was so enamored with Trader Joe's peppermint bark that I decided to Google it. Lo and behold, a lot of other people were also inspired to talk about peppermint bark online (particularly Trader Joe's versus the William's Sonoma version)

Here is a partial list, in no particular order

1. Waterowl.blogspot.com
2. Chowhound.chow.com
3. Typetive.com
4. Gothamist.com
5. Epinions.com
6. TraderJoesfan.com
7. Gigi-Reviews.blogspot.com

Heck. Even Amazon sells Trader Joe's peppermint bark. ($14.95 looks pricey. But you are getting a lot of peppermint bark)














Lesson of the day
If anyone is still asking about how they can get people to talk about their product online, the answer is to make it good and worth talking about.

When I was on LinkedIn, a title caught my eye, "Are You Creating  Evangelists?" What a question! Most people...and this even includes major corporations will reluctantly admit that the answer is no. It's so easy to get caught up in short term seemingly urgent details. And we brush aside the things we need to do to create brand advocates. Rochelle Moulton, the author of this post, gives some great advice on how to do this.

I doubt that the people behind Trader Joe's sat around and asked how they could create evangelists. More likely than not, they were just concerned with providing quality food products & trusted that people would be happy to spread the word. Without direct effort, they got like me to be their evangelist!  The other day I did some tweets about their baklava.And today I am publishing this blog about their peppermint bark.

This is just one example. It may not apply in this exact form to every business. It might be best for you to make deliberate efforts to create brand advocates as Rochelle Moulton suggests.

Regardless of what industry you are in,  you  need to make deliberate efforts to make your customers happy.
If you are not sure what to do, reach out and get direct insight from them.