Online Marketing for Die Kartoffel – The German Potato

Our client Kartoffel Marketing GmbH (German Potato Marketing Association, KMG) was founded in 2015. It represents all parts of the German food potato industry. Its goal is to promote and strengthen the potato’s image as a domestic, versatile and safe food. The campaign targets to reverse the regressive potato consumption trend – particularly in adolescent Germans and young families who favor rice and pasta – and to secure the potato a permanent spot in their diet. In German our campaign slogan “Entdecke ihre Stärke.” (“Discover its strength.”) is a wordplay: „Stärke“ means both starch and strength. Our digital marketing campaign meets its target audience at their primary hang-out: the digital realm. Our diverse marketing mix consists of a blog, social media channels and influencer marketing and keeps the target audience entertained. Contents on the blog and on the campaign’s social media channels align on joint monthly topics (mini-campaigns).

Strategic goals of the campaign are raising awareness and increasing reach as well as community building within the target audience. We draw on performance marketing and use all of its components from SEO, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), SEA to Social Media Marketing. We continuously measure and analyze user reactions, such as likes on a Facebook page or website visits. Through implementation of a media budget these KPIs are precisely optimized and enhanced. We therefore publish up to 250 ads per year for the campaign on Facebook and Google, for example in order to generate more blog traffic. Creating ads, their placement on Facebook or Google, their monitoring and continued adjustment are all part of our in-house services. On Facebook, we reach the Potato’s target audience through very fine targeting, for Google AdWords we developed a theme-related keyword-set for ads, which grows based on performance.

Every month our die-kartoffel.de blog features six delicious potato recipes – ranging from simple and seasonal to clever and sophisticated – plus four entertaining articles with information about Germany’s favorite spud. Heart of the campaign’s content are its recipe videos, which we create in our agency’s potato kitchen and also optimize for social media use in-house. Every video creates value for the target audience and inspires them to prepare the seemingly mundane and simple potato in new and ingenious ways.

The campaign's social channels, including the Facebook page with over 50,000 followers, continue the activities on the blog with interactive content (community building).

Influencer Marketing is by far the current most popular marketing method. For the potato campaign, we organized the #PotatoDay in Hamburg, an event for bloggers on the topic of “Clean Eating”. As a full service agency, we organized and accompanied the event from beginning to end. We also began a cooperation with chefkoch.de, Germany’s largest food portal.

In order to give people and emotions more space in the potato campaign, we also produced reaction videos in which ten members of the target audience try bizarre, seasonal and exotic potato dishes (without knowing what they are and that potatoes are the main ingredient). They openly and honestly say what they taste like to them. Potato-based ice cream, German Stollen or Brownies – as diverse as the reactions to the 15 potato dishes may have been, in the end all were super enthused and absolutely thrilled with the experience.