危 wēi  danger

Justin Esch attended a Kosher wedding in New York.  At the wedding he described the joys of bacon to a group who, for obvious reasons, had never tried it.  There and then it occurred to him that there should be a bacon condiment.  Justin shared the idea with Dave Lefkow, a colleague he worked with in a small tech firm in Seattle and they agreed that ‘everything should taste like bacon’.  They set about making that dream a reality and in 2007, developed a zero calorie, vegetarian, kosher certified bacon flavor seasoning.  They named it ‘Bacon Salt’ and decided to start selling it on the Internet.   The bad news was that neither had any experience of the food industry, raising capital or any real cash to bankroll a marketing campaign.

机 jī opportunity

Esch and Lefkow didn’t try to raise capital to fund an advertising campaign, instead they turned to the power of social networks.  They began by creating a group on Facebook and setting it up with heaps of Bacon Salt content to keep people interested.  They then set about befriending all of the bacon fan groups that they could find (of which there are surprisingly many), inviting them to join their group and sending them free product.  To help the page go viral they invited fans to upload their own content (including images from soldiers in Iraq that had received free product to season their rations).  They then proceeded to replicate the success on MySpace and before they knew it they had over 37,000 committed ‘fans’.  This and a subsequent appearance on Oprah have driven huge sales growth, Bacon salt, cleared more than $1 million in profit last year.

how about…

• Seeking out rabid fans who might become your early adopters and buzz campaigners?
• Harnessing existing social networks to try to find them?

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