Scratch Develops W.O.M. “Word of Mom” Campaign for Cuisinart Canada

Toronto, Canada, November 29, 2006 --(PR.com)-- In September of 2006, Cuisinart Canada initiated the first stage of its “Word of Mom” program with word-of-mouth marketing experts at urbanmoms.ca utilizing a campaign developed by Toronto-based agency, scratch. Cuisinart is focusing its efforts to provide families the tools they need to create quick, nutritious meals using their food processors. New mothers can download a full baby recipe book from www.cuisinart.ca which is filled with a variety of delicious recipes for their newborns.

Cuisinart Brand Manager Michelle Kostya’s goal was to build a truly interactive brand experience. Cuisinart wanted to build a relationship with mothers by offering unique, relevant and personal opportunities for moms across Canada to interact with the Cuisinart brand. urbanmoms.ca, the leading free, online community for modern Canadian mothers provided the perfect interface for Cuisinart and Canadian moms. In this community, brands are “invited” in rather than being just another banner advertiser. This type of non-intrusive softer branding appealed to Cuisinart.

“The rules of engagement are set by the urbanmoms.ca online community, and if you’re looking for hard selling, this is the wrong medium. Putting your brand (product) out there and letting it speak for itself can be nerve racking unless you’re 100% positive your brand is up to it. Cuisinart did not even hesitate,” said David Riabov, Partner, scratch.

With its blog style format, urbanmoms.ca created a “Cuisinart Kitchen Party” section and encouraged members to submit recipes, product evaluations, food stories, take polls or just comment on fellow members’ submissions. The content is honest, open and unaided, which facilitates participation. The response to the first email and content updates has been phenomenal, with a high percentage of click-thrus and page loads.

“The true opportunity here is to get consumers generating positive messages to each other about your brand. The only way to make this happen is to put control of the message within the hands of the community members. There is no copywriter creating the perfect way to communicate your message and sometimes you might not like everything you see but, if your brand is worthy, consumers will talk about it and an online community is an incredibly powerful and viral place to get the message out,” said Jen Maier, Founder of www.urbanmoms.ca, a marketer and mother of two.

With the continuing success of the online “Kitchen Party,” Cuisinart will now take the interaction offline by hosting Cuisinart Kitchen Parties in homes of urbanmoms.ca community members across Canada starting in 2007. These mini events will be hosted by an urbanmoms.ca member who will be asked to invite her friends over for a chance to learn unique, time-saving recipes from one of Cuisinart’s chefs. It will be an evening of food and fun as they sample a variety of dishes in a casual home environment while learning about how Cuisinart products can help them in their day-to-day cooking.

“These members and their friends lead very busy lives and see this evening as not only an opportunity to learn and sample but also as a chance to catch up with friends and have some fun. It is essential to create a party atmosphere where the guests feel that this is a great break and time well spent away from their families,” says Michelle Kostya.

Participants will receive a gift and cookbook from Cuisinart and party goers will be encouraged to write and comment about their Kitchen Party experience on urbanmoms.ca.

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