Return of the Tiger bread story

I received a few tweets last week that lead here. Bitter Wallet had picked up on a particularly friendly bit of customer service from Sainsbury’s who had received a letter from Lily (aged 3 and a half) who thought tiger bread ought to be renamed giraffe bread.

What’s interesting is that despite loads of coverage on Twitter and FB, the article and the whole incident, took place last June.  Only this January have we seen a second spike of activity which has been larger than the original viral effect last year.

This chap has looked at what made it spike again and it seems we can base the phenomenon on 4 factors.

Two obvious ones:

1. A great response from Sainsbury’s to spark the ‘story’

2. A key influencer posting the image on FB to a large number of active fans

And then more importantly:

3. Media blogs and key (media) individuals amplifying through their own personal networks

4. The ability to better share images on face book now (versus last summer)

All of that has culminated in a bigger second spike, resulting in national media coverage and Sainsbury’s changing the name of their bread yesterday.

Which they’re now promoting on Twitter…

A few things to think about:

1.   Images are less of a turn off, they are quicker, easier and  stand more chance of being shared than copy – even though this was an image of two letters!

2.   Old news isn’t necessarily old news, interesting content endures and doesn’t serve as a barrier if people have never seen the content before and trust the source

3.   The importance of connectors, in this case media industry individuals and a few ‘trend threads’ such as contagious, purely because of how interconnected and active (professionally and personally) most employees are on social networks, compared to the norm. This provided a tipping point in Jan that didn’t appear to materialise last year, and this increased noise has since propelled the story into mainstream media including The Sun and The Telegraph.

4.  Finally, nothing beats a good bit of customer service. It’s a mark of how thin on the ground it is when acts such as this garner such widespread interest. Many brands spend months discussing ideas that could ‘go viral’, when in truth, to get talked about all you really have to do is please your customer and they’ll do the rest.