The Return of the Marmarati
We’ve been working with Unilever since 2009 when they first approached We Are Social to launch an extra strong variant of Marmite exclusively using social media. The result of that was The Marmarati – a Victorian-Style secret society of hardcore Marmite lovers who we rewarded with an exclusive most fans can only dream of: a chance to choose the flavour of the new variant at a tasting with the Master Blender of Marmite, St. John O. Skelton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cqJWRGxOIsw
It’s fair to say it was a pretty huge leap in building engagement with brand advocates in social media and it turned out to be a big deal for all of us here too, picking us up no fewer than 13 industry awards.
So – where have the Marmarati been? Like any Secret Society we took them back underground, in a private Facebook group under the watchful guise of our Master of Ceremonies, William Fotherington-Smythe, where they kept themselves busy. We tracked activity in the group against a recent Socialbakers report on page engagement and, although not necessarily directly comparable due to the obvious differences between this sort of group and your typical Facebook fan page, we found that William’s posts received an average 14.51% engagement compared to just 0.87% for the most engaged fan page in the UK.
We kept up the engagement with real world events too – in November last year we reactivated the group at the Trial of Lord Marmarati, attended by over 60 members from across the UK who gathered to hear heinous allegations of crimes against Marmite from the previous Lord Marmarati at a 15th Century Law Court at Lincoln’s Inn:
In the words of the the Victorian paperboy handing out papers outside on the night, ‘read all about it!’. On that night a seismic change was felt in the society and we elected a new leader, St. John, to lead the Marmarati into a bold new dawn.
It was decided that the Marmarati would induct new members to continue to give superfans a chance to engage with the brand whilst taking the idea of social CRM to a whole new level. The price of entry to the group is for prospects to prove their love at what William can only describe as “A glorious new portal on the Information Super Carriageway, www.marmarati.org”.
As you may have read in Stylist or Marketing today, the site will host 8 challenges between now and August 19th, with the first 4 live now – Photography, Art, Crafts and of course Cooking. Each is led by a video of St. John, which we filmed in a crazy 48 hour blur at the Marmite Factory in Burton on Trent, and despite his lack of any previous acting experience we’re expecting St. John to be appearing in feature films in no time. We even managed to convince some of his colleagues to appear half naked within 5 minutes of meeting them. Such is the power of the Marmarati’s call.
To help spread the message a little further we’ve also recruited a crack team of judges to set the standard for each challenge who you’ll be meeting on the Marmarati blog over the next few weeks, conducted a 2 day takeover of the Marmite Facebook page and are currently searching out potential prospects on Twitter – come and say “What ho!” when you’ve got a chance.
We’ll be continuing to build the Marmarati over the coming months, so get registered at www.marmarati.org if you think you’ve got what it takes to join. Rumour has it this next wave of Marmarati might even be rewarded with exclusive Marmarati treats and trinkets, but if we told you any more we’d have to Marmite and feather you.
Be prepared for the future of Social CRM. It’s black, sticky and with the right client and the right campaign it could be extra strong too.