BOGOTÁ: Pernod Ricard, the drinks business, gathered a wealth of information from an online community in Colombia, and attributed part of that success to a program of incentives that encouraged participants to complete a range of tasks.
In an ESOMAR paper, Beyond lifestyles, trends and drinks: How Pernod Ricard created new ways of developing online communities, Andrea Ascarrunz and Maria Alejandra Velandia of Pernod Ricard’s insights team in Colombia, explain how the community helped them explore how a new brand in an unexplored category had the opportunity to be incorporated into moments of consumption.
“We needed to go beyond trends, opinions and lifestyles, we needed to be closer to our consumers and their experiences,” they said.
Those consumers were identified as women who pay close attention to their appearance, like to go to trendy places and are willing to learn new things; the online community environment reflected this in its look and feel, tone of voice and incorporated elements of gamification and rewards for undertaking a range of activities.
“According to the quality of the participation a certain amount of points were granted to users,” the authors note.
Thus, someone could win 200 points if they answered all the questions and shared videos and/or photos in a diary activity; if they didn’t give much detail they might only get 50 points.
These points could be exchanged for rewards in various categories – including clothes & accessories, makeup & vanity, spa, home, tech & electronics, and Liquor – with users able to ‘shop’ rewards from the moment they started to gain points.
“If they saw a prize they really liked, they would interact as much as they could to gain the amount of points they needed,” the authors reported, adding that they had found it important that participants claim at least one prize after only a few activities.
“We noticed that the participants who claimed prices after winning some points, as opposed to those who waited until the end, were more motivated to continue completing activities.
“The fact that they received a prize keeps them wanting more.”
Sourced from WARC
