Godiva Chocolates

With the category application “I Love Chocolate,” Godiva fans sent over 1 million virtual chocolates to friends in two weeks, and grew Godiva’s Facebook Fan Page to 15,000 members.

Background

Godiva Chocolatier is a luxury confectioner selling elegant, hand-crafted chocolates with a reputation for quality and design excellence. While Godiva’s brand is well-established with the Boomer generation, Godiva was seeking a way to engage Milleniums, the future generation of customers.

They wanted to engage with Milleniums and introduce them to the quality and excellence that Godiva represents. Realizing that the best way to connect with Milleniums is to interact with them on Facebook, where they spend so much time, the brand team was seeking ways to use social media marketing beyond display ads.

Objectives

1. Create brand visibility on the internet for a generation less familiar with Godiva
2. Add interactive marketing to Godiva’s existing internet presence
3. Create brand impressions in a way that doesn’t feel overly commercial
4. Present Godiva as high quality but also contemporary and fun
5. Increase traffic and membership on Godiva’s Facebook fan page

Results

Friend2Friend created a new application to get the brand in front of online consumers and propagate Godiva chocolates in a socially engaging way. The category application—I Love Chocolate—enables Facebook users to send their friends virtual chocolate gifts. Users select from a gallery of Godiva-branded chocolates and generic items and pass them on to their friends, who receive the gift and are offered the opportunity to send chocolates themselves.

In just two weeks, over 1 million chocolate gifts were sent, the majority of which were Godiva. Over 10 million social impressions were generated for the brand, as the brand’s product and a personal message were sent from one friend to another across the social network. A key factor in the popularity of this application is that the experience doesn’t feel like advertising to the user. It’s an entertaining experience to choose a chocolate from several images and send them to friends—the subtle brand exposure doesn’t feel commercial.

During this time, Godiva’s Facebook Fan page grew from a small group to over 15,000 fans, who self-selected to be Godiva brand advocates and stay connected to the brand. The I Love Chocolate application continues to show viral growth, is highly rated (4.6 stars out of 5), and has its own fan base of 46 thousand members. These results illustrate the power of social applications to connect people and products online.