Does your brand invest in promotional products? Gone are the days of pedaling pens at a trade show. Today’s marketers are introducing all sorts of promotional products. And why not? Research shows 81% of consumers keep promotional items for at least a year and 90% of people can recall the logo and company name on them. Oscar Mayer’s clothing line aims to take it up a notch.
While face masks and USB drives are some of the most popular items to give away, Oscar Mayer decided to up its game. The company created a 13-piece line of branded apparel, with everything from a track suit to a bucket hat, that was featured in AdWeek.
The marketing impact of Oscar Mayer’s clothing line
Who can resist talking about a clothing line from an iconic 138-year-old hot dog company? Posts like this one from @progressive_grocer mentioned the new streetwear, which was originally created for Wienermobile drivers, known as hotdoggers. Now, the “Street Meat” collection is available at hot dog carts in NYC, LA, Atlanta and pop-up events where the Weinermobile rolls into town.
Share of voice jumps
Posts like this one helped drive Oscar Mayer’s share of voice up. BrandGraph, a social intelligence platform, shows Oscar Mayer’s share of voice shot right up at the end of September when the brand introduced the new apparel.
The share of voice, which compares how much social chatter surrounds the brand compared with its competitors, went from 8% on Sept. 21 to an estimated 33% on Oct. 21.
Attempts to improve organic reach
Creating content that your audience engages with is important, but Oscar Mayer has struggled in that department this year. Take a look at Oscar Mayer’s organic reach over the last 12 months compared with its competitors.
As you can see, the average piece of content created by Oscar Mayer reaches just over 19,000 people, which is better than Kretschmar Deli (at 15,569) and Black Label Bacon (at 11,079), but it pales in comparison to top-ranked Columbus, which reaches 270,000 people, according to BrandGraph.
As marketers, we can speculate that the trendy new clothes might be a way to engage with more people, especially the younger crowd.
BrandGraph provides a snapshot of Oscar Mayer’s audience, or those who are posting organically about the brand, and it looks like 71% of its audience is female and about 30% are between the ages of 25-34.
It’s possible, judging by the look of the new apparel and the models who are sporting it, that Oscar Mayer is trying to gain more of an audience with the 18- to 24-year-olds. Right now, about 18% of the brand’s content creators are of that age, so there’s room for growth.
Engagement could increase
Surprisingly enough, Oscar Mayer isn’t the first brand to introduce its own clothing line this year. Several other brands, including Pizza Hut and Panera, have distributed apparel. AdWeek recently featured Pizza Hut’s apparel, consisting of a track suit, T-shirt, flip-flops, a pizza slice necklace, and glassware.
Panera went a slightly different direction and introduced “Swim Soups,” a line of swimwear specifically designed for the 70% of Panera customers who say warm temperatures do not stop them from ordering signature soups.
When Pizza Hut introduced its apparel in late June, the brand had a bump in both sponsored and organic engagement surrounding that time frame, indicated by the red circle on the graph below.
Panera experienced something similar. The brand saw an uptick in engagement after its Swim Soups went public in July. In fact, the brand rode an engagement high through September.
One would expect the same results to take place for Oscar Mayer, too. And indeed, it has.
Oscar Mayer’s yellow and red garments were introduced at the end of September. The brand saw a spike in both sponsored content and organic content at that time. The increase lasted for about a month, almost to the end of October, before decreasing.
BrandGraph has provided a data-driven look inside Oscar Mayer’s social activity and it can do the same for your brand. Interested? Learn more about this invaluable marketing tool at brandgraph.izea.com.
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