Stonyfield’s New Look Driven by Consumer Input
Virtual community saved Gurt, the company mascot, from certain doom
Londonderry, NH—December 1, 2009—Stonyfield Farm’s President and CE-Yo gives a lot of the credit for the organic yogurt maker’s new packaging and website to the people who eat that yogurt.
“We’ve been talking to our consumers for more than 26 years about everything from potential new flavors to climate change, and we’re grateful that they talk back—a lot,” Gary Hirshberg explains. “So, of course, we consulted them when we decided to change our look.”
Those consumers were ready and waiting, thanks to a virtual community called MyStonyfield, created in anticipation of the Stonyfield relaunch. Almost 40,000 consumers interact with Hirshberg and the Stonyfield marketing team on a regular basis, and for the packaging changes, they weighed in on cup designs, colors, and all manner of packaging plans.
“We even asked about our logo change, from Stonyfield Farm to Stonyfield,” says Hirshberg, “but we got a real earful when we even suggested dropping our cow mascot, Gurt, from the logo.”
Stonyfield’s use of social media includes Twitter and Facebook fan pages for Stonyfield, YoBaby and Oikos, its organic Greek yogurt. An active blogger outreach strategy is also used to announce product launches and company initiatives, as well as spotlight news about organics, climate change and more.
“Social media is an astounding tool to generate the kind of conversations with consumers we’ve enjoyed since our early days,” says Hirshberg. “We’ve never stopped asking people for their opinions—and we’ll never get tired of hearing them.”
About Stonyfield Farm
Stonyfield Farm, celebrating its 27th year, is the world’s leading organic yogurt company. Its all natural and certified organic yogurt, smoothies, milk, cultured soy, frozen yogurt and ice cream are distributed nationally. The company advocates that healthy food can only come from a healthy planet. Its use of organic ingredients helps keep over 180,000 farm acres free of toxic, persistent pesticides and chemical fertilizers known to contaminate soil, drinking water and food. To help reduce climate change, Stonyfield offsets all of the CO2 emissions generated from its facility energy use. The company also started a nonprofit called Climate Counts (climatecounts.org), which shows people how they can help fight climate change by the way they shop and invest. Stonyfield also donates 10% of its profits to efforts that help protect and restore the Earth. For more information about Stonyfield Farm, its products and initiatives, visit www.stonyfield.com.
