The Pocket Knife Effect
A little over a year ago a curious phenomenon took place in newsagents and corner shops across the UK. After an absence of four years Cadbury’s Wispa bars, withdrawn because of poor sales and production problems, suddenly re-appeared on the shelves and instantly became the most successful chocolate bar product ‘launch’ in decades.
More surprising still was the fact that the communications supporting the launch consisted only of the exploitation of social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo. These sites were used to seed rumours and to initiate a ‘spontaneous’ consumer led campaign demanding the resurrection of the old favourite. Within no time more than 14,000 Wispa lovers had formed nearly 100 Facebook groups, generating coverage in over 300 news items with more than 54 million opportunities to see or hear the story.
At a fraction of the cost of a traditional above-the-line product launch campaign, the Wispa social networking launch was a brilliant example of how clever use of a specific channel of consumer communication was able to produce stunning sales results.
