I had a great talk with Larry Martin, the VP of marketing at Ocean Spray, as well as Troy Kelley, chief digital officer of Arnold Worldwide, which is the digital AOR for these cranberry juice kings. The info will appear as part of Kevin McKeefery’s vertical feature focus on beverage marketing in next week’s print edition of DMNews.
According to Kelley, encouraging CPG companies to reach beyond large-scale ad campaigns and to see the power of digital platforms can be hard. “One of my big challenges is constantly talking to clients about the difference between a 30-second spot and an editorial calendar and portfolio,” he explains. “Content is still the most important thing to deliver creative messaging on a website.” For Ocean Spray’s website, he says, recipe content is essential — it’s even been tied into social media initiatives. “We’re inviting people into recipe conversations,” he says. “They can forward recipes to friends and submit their own comments about recipes — how they uesd it — and it begins to really evolve and shape the relationship with the brand.
I’m a cranberry fan — and love those “Straight from the Bog” commercials. Maybe I should join the “Cranberry Club.”
