Insomnia cookies jennifer churchill

What keeps YOU up at night?Friday, August 20, 2010

Traditional advertising is losing its influence on consumers. Insomnia Cookies needs to reach its customers with web content, and become a thought leader (as suggested by David Meerman Scott in his book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”) in study solutions and the importance of a good “cookie break.” By doing this, Insomnia Cookies will have content online that will turn browsers into buyers. New media incorporates traditional web site construction, SEO and online news releases, as well as all of the online conversations taking place on blogs and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, online video and viral marketing.

Goals

&Targets

Friday, August 20, 2010

While consumption of social media is becoming extremely popular amongst all age groups, it has the most ubiquitous hold on younger Americans, such as college students. Insomnia Cookies caters directly to college students and needs to fully capitalize on this cutting-edge outreach and marketing opportunity. Insomnia Cookies offers a very niche product (delicious cookies delivered to your door) to a very niche target market (college students) at a very niche time (late nights). The opportunities to employ new media to accomplish Insomnia Cookies’ mission statement of providing dependable late night food delivery to college students are limitless.


There are 14 Insomnia Cookies locations throughout the United States, including in East Lansing, Michigan, near the Michigan State University campus. The others are located near or on the campuses of Cornell University, Indiana University, New York University, Ohio State University, Penn State University, Purdue University, Syracuse University, Temple University, University of Delaware-Newark, University of Illinois, University of Kentucky, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania.

42%

33%

24%

2006 2007 2008

811

14


Insomnia Cookies was expanding its number of franchises very quickly for a few years, topping out with 14 locations in 2008 that still exist today. There were 8 company-owned franchises in 2006, 11 in 2007 and 14 in 2008. There could be an Insomnia Cookies franchise in, potentially, every college community in the United States.

Who bakes these cookies, anyway?

?Friday, August 20, 2010

Insomnia Cookies’ goals are to pursue overall revenue growth through customer retention and franchise growth through higher visibility and better brand awareness. But in order to reach these “business” goals, Insomnia Cookies needs to identify what it does for its customers and communicate that. What does Insomnia Cookies do for you, the customer? They provide you with an alternative to fast food when you’re up late studying (or partying), and delivers it fresh to your dorm-room or apartment door. The foundation to building this online conversation is to establish a social media policy inside the company, one that encourages employees to start participating online under certain parameters and puts a “face” on “who makes these cookies.” Currently, Insomnia Cookies’ employees are faceless secrets; we don’t know who they are. The company needs to hire a social media specialist to oversee all 14 sites’ online tools, and provide template content that gets pushed out to the individual locations. There should be one designated “social media” staffer at each university location who is responsible for providing that “face” and posting template-provided information about specials/etc., as well as fun tid-bits about local events and studying tips and factoids. Blog/online content could include: study tips, homework horror stories, hangover cures, responsible partying tips, milk and cookies facts/history, and university competition interactivity.http://www.insomnniacookies.comhttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Insomnia-Cookies/5825849653#!/pages/Insomnia-Cookies/5825849653?v=wall

Baked Right.Late Night.

What keeps YOUup at night?


The “Baked Right. Late Night.” tagline is not catchy - it’s not easy to say, and doesn’t provide a personality to the cookies. “What keeps YOU up at night?” is a cute play on the business name of Insomnia Cookies - insomnia is about staying up all night, in this case, to study or party. There are many ways to play off this tagline, such as blog postings encouraging people to answer the question: What keeps YOU up at night? - which could lead to funny, possibly racy, answers, but all in fun.

What keeps YOUup at night?


Insomnia Cookies’ online presence is very disjointed and outdated. The web site exists only for online ordering, and contains no useful information otherwise. It’s missing a personality. The social media situation is also disjointed - each campus seems to have its own Facebook page, for example - and there is no consistency. Some Facebook pages have photos, some do not. Most haven’t been updated in months, even years, in some cases. None of them reference one another, and it’s unclear if you’re on the right Facebook page for your particular university. In fact, you might be on the wrong Facebook page for some time before discovering it belongs to another location’s Insomnia Cookies franchise. The web site needs to be re-designed with helpful content and study tips with SEO in mind, and with links to college bloggers and other information, not just order forms. There needs to be an umbrella site under each major social media site, from which the others link to very clearly: Wikipedia (currently no entry at all), YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace. All of these sites need to unify under the new, fun tagline. And this is the perfect business model for establishing order-by-text/mobile phone options - which could be encouraged by having “contests” such as “The 25th customer to text us their order on Friday night gets their order delivered free.”

Blogs, Videos & News


Besides ongoing social media monitoring and intentional SEO of the Insomnia Cookies web site, blogger outreach needs to be a conscious element of the new media plan, as well. Sending free cookie samples to college bloggers, study-tip bloggers, college-event blogs and sites would be a good first step. An Insomnia Cookies blog - What keeps YOU up at night? - could be a good place for interactivity amongst the 14 different cookie locations, where college students could post answers to what keeps them up at night: a fight with their boyfriend, cramming for a mid-term, etc. Other interactivity could be stimulated by online contests: Upload a video of you and your friends pigging out on Insomnia Cookies, or acting goofy with a Cookie Monster character, and be entered to win free cookies for your whole dorm! Or set up free cookie samples in dorm-room common areas with an invitation to “friend us” on Facebook to get a free milk coupon with your next order of cookies, etc. News releases of all of these activities should be posted on the IC web site with links to social media outlets, and also be distributed via mainstream p.r. sites: local news organizations, www.businesswire.com, www.globenewswire.com, www.marketwire.com, www.primenewswire.com, and www.prweb.com.

Cookies, chocolate chip cookies

Cookie recipes

College (and each university specifically)

Late-night

Studying

Study tips

All-nighter


How will success be measured? In the end, by an increase in sales; test site launches of free cookie give-aways and video upload contests would be a good indicator of success. Success in outreach will be measured in the number of “friends” and “fans” on the social media sites, as well as the number of uploads and views of videos during contests. Social media monitoring will also provide success rates in “buzz” activity surrounding Insomnia Cookies. Full business success will be measured by an increase in sales at each location, and - longer-term - new franchises.

What keeps YOU up at night?


Budget implications: Fixed cost - Hiring of one full-time corporate social media staffer: $60,000/year. Incidental costs of providing “free” samples and free cookie deliveries: indeterminate. Cost to create solid social media platforms: free. Google AdWords budget: Start out with $25,000/year overall. The total marketing plan for all 14 franchises would be approximately $100,000; divided by 14, that’s only $7,142 per franchise.

Insomnia cookies jennifer churchill

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