Mouthful of Meal Sharing Prepared by: Luke Crawford, luke.crawford@loop.colum.edu Makenzie Gee, makenzie.gee@loop.colum.edu

MEAL SHARING

WHAT’S COOKING? 3

CLIENT DESCRIPTION 3

REVIEW OF CURRENT POSITIONING 3

TASTE-TEST 4

SUMMARY OF NEED 4

BUSINESS GOAL 4

COMMUNICATIONS AUDIT 4

INDICATORS OF SUCCESS 4

CULINARY CRITIQUES 5

SWOT ANALYSIS & RECOMMENDATIONS 5

WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? 6

CURRENT AUDIENCES 6

CURRENT AUDIENCE TECHNOGRAPHICS 6

APPROACH 6

AUDIENCE ACTION GOALS 7

MESSAGES & CONTENT RECOMMENDATIONS 7

#SELFIE SUCCESS 8

KEY CONTENT 8

OUR CONTENT RECOMMENDATIONS 8

SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVES & STRATEGY 9

RESTATEMENT OF BUSINESS GOAL 9

KEY STRATEGY STATEMENT 9

KEY SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVE 9

SUPPORT FOR KEY STRATEGY 9

RECOMMENDATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS & TACTICS 10

CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS 10

FACEBOOK 10

TWITTER 11

FURTHER NOTES ON TOOLS 11

MEASUREMENTS 12

HOW WILL RELATIONSHIPS CHANGE? 12

QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENTS 12

QUALITATIVE MEASUREMENTS 12

KEEPING THE SMOKE DETECTOR CALM 13

POTENTIAL INTERNAL RISK 13

POTENTIAL EXTERNAL RISK 13

REDUCTION OF RISK 13

SUMMARY 14

NEED 14

BUSINESS GOAL 14

SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVE 14

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY 14

!2

RECIPE TO SUCCESS

WHAT’S COOKING? Our form of introduction before we dig in!

Client Description Connecting travelers and locals over home cooked meals.

Review of Current Positioning Meal Sharing exists in a new space and you are paving a different kind of path within collaborative consumption. Due to the unique nature of this market, there are very few competitors at this time. However, because of the spike in interactive apps that bring food to the consumer and other unique culinary options available for anyone with a smartphone, Meal Sharing must stay engaging and “deliver” on their promises in order to continue to succeed.

!3

TASTE-TEST After taking a peak into the picnic basket, here’s what we found.

Summary of Need There is need for improvement regarding brand awareness, specifically in the Chicago market. Awareness is lacking due to the singular focus of the brand, but since you are “fresh” to the market, there is a lot of potential and ability to capitalize in the current honeymoon stage. Chocolate-covered strawberries, caviar, and champagne… the works! Business Goal Marketing the services of your brand. We know you’re awesome, we want others to know it too! Communications Audit Meal Sharing currently focuses on one main audience - travelers. We would like you to also each out to college students and Chicagoans as a whole. Your current audience communications are via Facebook, Twitter, your website and direct email. Current social engagement on all listed platforms are in good standing. (Our specific notes to follow.) Indicators of Success Number of followers on all social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and company website) will be the direct indicator of success. Continuous engagement on social platforms will also serve as an indicator. If fewer people engage (comment, post, retweet, mention, favorite, etc.), this is a bad sign in regards to communications and relationship building.

!4

CULINARY CRITIQUES Mmmm! Here are our initial thoughts…

SWOT Analysis & Recommendations Strengths [Internal]: Only program of its type, excited and passionate start-up staff, 1871 support Weaknesses [Internal]: Meal quality control Opportunities [External]: Using more "foodie" travel apps and platforms to get the word out, college campus partnerships (student engagement/student activities & leadership) Threats [External]: Other events, food-delivery apps, restaurants Analysis: We plan to approach our analysis and recommendations by looking to conquer Weaknesses with one of the Opportunities and one of the Threats with a Strength. If the Opportunities are not addressed and capitalized on in a timely manner, the market will absorb the chance to succeed due to the volatile conditions of the market.

!5

WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? Have your guests RSVP’d or are they just going to show up with a bottle of wine and no corkscrew? Below is our wrap-up of your audience.

Current Audiences Travelers and current hosts.

Current Audience Technographics What are technographics? They are tools that help us identify the characteristics of our audiences by segmenting them into groups. Basically, it separates the carnivores from the vegetarians, the milkshake-lovers from the wheatgrass smoothie-lovers, and the coffee-drinkers from the tea-sippers. We’ve read through your social platforms and took note of how your audience interacted. We’ve listed the “groups” your audience fits into below.

Conversationalists - They meet everyone, and always make introductions. Bringing their smile, charm and personal insights to the dinner party atmosphere.

Collectors - They collect invitations like it’s their job. They keep addresses, phone numbers and recipes on their person at all times. If you want to learn how to fold a napkin properly, they’re your go-to! Not to mention, they’ve gone to etiquette classes and have taken notes.. they even have diagrams. Basically, they are Pinterest.

Joiners - They are, in a sense, the dine and dashers. Think of them as the accidental +1’s of your guests. They will have little to no interaction with the others and no one will really know their names, or remember they were even there.

Inactives - They didn’t get the e-vite (or didn’t know how to open it) and never made it to the dinner party after all, but you never know, they could have a kick-butt muffin recipe.

Approach To approach the Conversationalists, we will focus on authentic interaction via all Meal Sharing social platforms that are currently in use. We also encourage you to spark-up and facilitate conversations at the Time of Conversion - when a consumer joins the Meal Sharing website. After this conversation is started, we expect the Conversationalists to engage with the Collectors and Joiners in your audience. Ultimately, this approach will foster a community-centered environment. Hopefully, the Inactives will stop hiding their muffin recipe, and share a meal with Meal Sharing!

!6

Audience Action Goals • Twitter - Retweets, and Mentions (not only favorites)

• Facebook - Comments and more follower posts.

• Website - Leave reviews and post on the profiles of other Meal Share members.

Messages & Content Recommendations

KEY MESSAGES • We have a “make what you make” policy!

• Meet new flavors and friends!

• Taste the culture and community around you!

SUPPORTING MESSAGES • If you like to host, you don’t have to be a gourmand.

• Who wouldn’t want to expand their network over an auspicious meal?

• Chicago is a melting-pot. Why not expose yourself with all five of your senses to the cultures surrounding your in this urban windy city?

RELATED SOCIAL TOPICS & CONVERSATIONS

• Farmers Markets - Our hosts need unique and delicious food options for their meals. We should facilitate a conversation with most of the farmers markets to help them approach our hosts to create a win-win-win situation.

• Urban Gardens - These innovative patches, give hosts the ability to make their meal “farm to table” fresh, without having to leave the city.

• Networking events - Our meals are, in essence, a networking event. This can help or hurt other networking events depending on the target market and size of event/meal.

!7

#SELFIE SUCCESS Everyday is a #Selfie day! Below is an analysis of your current online presence via social platforms, and our recommendations to optimize your “social” presence.

Key Content Meal Sharing’s content is very image based. Using pictures of the food and the meals being shared with their customer base to spark conversation and interest from their audiences.

Our Content Recommendations - We recommend to keep using images as content, and to use the images strategically to spark engagement

rather than likes. It will draw attention to their pages and encourage sharing with the local audience base.

- One example of this strategy would be to caption an image asking the audience what food they think the picture is depicting. The winner could win a free Meal Share, and we could engage from there!

!8

SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVES & STRATEGY Restatement of Business Goal Marketing Key Strategy Statement We will be pursuing a Conversation Strategy that will facilitate and focus on engagement with key audiences in order to build awareness of the brand and create opportunities to strengthen relations.

Key Social Media Objective We will do this by focusing on Talking with audiences by leading and participating in conversations online. This will also be supported by a Listening objective by gathering insights about our brand and the people we want to engage.

Support for Key Strategy After our SWOT, Audience Analysis and Content Analysis (see above) we feel the following points support our Key Social Media Objective.

SWOT - One of your best strengths is your ability and willingness to interact with your customers

Audience Analysis - Since the majority of your online audience fall into our “Conversationalist” category, the best approach with them is to converse!

Content Analysis - You receive fewer likes (and other forms of engagement) when your posts are not image based. Food-Porn seems to begin conversations and positive engagement on your social platforms.

!9

RECOMMENDATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS & TACTICS Current Social Media Tools Facebook & Twitter - We believe these tools are effective in fostering a food-porn society due to their image-optimized-user-interface. We advise the continual use of these platforms.

Facebook - URL of platform: https://www.facebook.com/MealSharing

- Number of Followers/Following: 8,876 likes

- Brief evaluation of current communications. What is working, what is not working, what needs to be improved.

- Posting 1-2 times per day. Very image based (good). Getting 0-30 likes on each post, but mainly only 3-5. They should do an audit of the type of posts that get likes, and the individuals that engage the most and optimize their audience engagement with that data.

!10

Twitter - URL of platform: https://twitter.com/MealSharing

- Number of Followers/Following: Following 2,001, 1,176 followers

- Brief evaluation of current communications. What is working, what is not working, what needs to be improved.

- They post the exact same content on Facebook and Twitter. Still very image based which is good, but even the copy is the same. I believe they will get a higher engagement if they do the extra work and optimize the copy for each platform.

Further Notes on Tools The current tools being used have been set up and utilized correctly for their target audience. Meal Sharing has the systems set in place, and with a slight shift in the utilization of their tools, they can build local awareness.

!11

MEASUREMENTS Tablespoons, teaspoons, pinches and dashes, we use those measurements to bake a cake. Here are the measurements we use to build relationships online.

How will relationships change? We plan to build the number of relationships you have all while keeping the high quality of current engagement. By capitalizing on the cultural experience and melting-pot mentality, we can support the growth of trust the consumer has for Meal Sharing. This type of mentality, and the use of positive engagement will phase the company from start-up to stand-out. These metrics are how we will measure our success along the way. Quantitative Measurements Number of new members/followers on Facebook, Twitter and the Meal Sharing website. Qualitative Measurements Positive reviews on the Meal Sharing website, as well as positive (happy, joyful, etc) comments on Facebook, and positive mentions on Twitter. As far as public perception goes, we hope to capitalize on the idea of a stay-cation and the ability to “go to Morocco for a meal” for $9 rather than book a flight on United, get stranded in Jersey, and lose your bags for $600+.

!12

KEEPING THE SMOKE DETECTOR CALM Potential Internal Risk Human error on behalf of Meal Sharing representatives

Potential External Risk Since the audiences of Meal Sharing are so conversational on all forms of the social space, they will be very “vocal” about any poor service or wrong-doing at a meal share.

Reduction of Risk The best way to reduce risk is to ensure all internal communicators are aware of the Key Messages and Supporting Messages. This will combat both internal and external risks.

**Policy Possibility - The above “Internal Risks” merit the implementation of a Social Media Policy as well as an Audience Engagement Policy to ensure consistent, congruent, and comprehensive communications with your audience. We would be happy to design these policies to assist in avoiding potential public relations risks.

!13

SUMMARY Need Meal Sharing needs help improving awareness of their brand, specifically in the Chicago market.

Business Goal Marketing

Social Media Objective Talking - To engage with the audience. Almost like how Meal Sharing currently engages with their audience.

Social Media Strategy Conversing - Engaging with the Meal Sharing audience in an engaging way that encourages them to do what they do best… converse! That way, we can encourage word of mouth to spread the awareness and marketability of the Meal Sharing brand throughout the Chicagoland area!

!14