Kroger Taps Store-Brand Advocates

CINCINNATI — BzzAgent, the social marketing arm of Dunnhumby, is using Kroger loyalty data to pinpoint and recruit the best store-brand advocates for word-of-mouth social media campaigns.

“Over the next year Kroger is looking to beef up its investment in social word-of-mouth,” Paul Hunter, chief operating officer for BzzAgent, told SN.

Initial campaigns will focus on Private Selection frozen pizza, Kroger Little Clinics, Truly Awesome Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies and Kroger Comforts baby care products.

Shoppers heavily engaged in any of these categories with repeated purchases of the promoted private label are particularly desirable. “We have thousands of those best customers and within that group is where we believe the best brand advocates exist,” Hunter said.

Once selected, agreeable shoppers are invited to become a BzzAgent. “Nothing is initiated unless the customer has given us overt permission and has gone through an opt-in process,” explained Malcolm Faulds, senior vice president of marketing for BzzAgent. The incentive is free samples of the products they’ve purchased time and again.

“We encourage authentic conversations with people they know and require transparency about being a BzzAgent,” Faulds said.

Upon sign up, shoppers link their BzzAgent account to authored blogs and personal Facebook and Twitter accounts. Posts created on the site that features tools for embedding coupons, are automatically published to all three mediums. BzzAgent reviews posts for quality, accuracy and to gauge the number of impressions. It assigns each agent an advocacy score. “Someone with a lot of followers but who’s not able to generate a response isn’t as valuable to us as those with a smaller group but greater response,” explained Faulds.