Vegan Ben & Jerry's Social Media Monitoring Part 2

In my last post we took a look at Ben & Jerry's new line of vegan products. We saw some early success and uncovered some potential issues that the product could encounter. The main concern came from their target market about the truth and honesty of their claims. As B&J's noted, most people looking to buy the vegan line (their target market) are dedicated and conscious people. They've made the choice to follow a strict diet for political, health, or environmental reasons. A vegan diet requires a lot of passion so it makes sense that the products they consume fall under a heavy line of question.



Addressing Issues: 

We saw B&J's linking people with concerns to pages about their products in my last post. For this post I think we should look a little more closely at the framework of proof that Ben and Jerry's has assembled to set their vegan customers at ease.

The vegan line's homepage immediately sets the tone by linking readers to pages about their certification (and certification provider), almond milk, bakery, fair-trade and non-GMO, and reasons for going non-dairy.

I found that each of these pages was helpful yet mildly vague. They leave out some details that customers are still showing concern about. (2:13 / 4:25 of video we see a great example)

The next concern we encountered was that many customers were wondering where and when they could find these new flavors. To address this, bellow each flavor they've added links to a locating page where you can enter your own zip code to find the nearest location.

Comparison:
To get a feel for how other lines and products from B&J's are doing we can take a look at some other flavors. In the past week they announced the arrival of three new "flavor core" products. I've decided to look at one brand new flavor, an older flavor from that same line, and a vegan flavor.                          

From this comparison on Google Trends we see that the Vegan Chunky Monkey has peaked the highest interest and maintained it's buzz better than the standby Karamel Sutra and brand new Cookies and Cream Cheesecake Core.

       Vegan Chunky Monkey             Karamel Sutra Core        Cookies and Cream Cheesecake Core

By looking closer with Social mention we see that strength, passion and reach are fairly low for all three flavors- however the vegan flavor elicits a much higher positive sentiment than the others. Perhaps this is the upside of having such a passionate target audience (the hashtag #vegan has just over 23 million posts on IG).

Goals:
It seems to me like Ben & Jerry's is very self aware- they know who they're reaching out to and they know how to back up their claims and they're taking action to do so. To continue catering to their new focal audience I think they should make it a goal to adjust their tone slightly. Their posts for this line need to be a bit more serious and factual than their average post.

They need to simplify their links by making it clear which links will take you to more B&J's explanations and which pages will take you directly to referenced company's and organizations pages.

They also need to play into the popularity of  #vegan and continue to create buzz with posts, contests and updates.