Is Mayo Really Worth Blogging About?

 I guess I am answering my own question with this post about the new Hellmann’s Mayonnaise campaign that broke recently. It’s called “In Search of Real Food” and is a custom media partnership that is located on the food section of Yahoo (which is a much better idea than trying to drive people to the Hellmann’s site).

The content features Dave Lieberman from The Food Network, who is traveling across the country asking people what real food means to them and why it’s important. It’s all pretty well done. However, that’s not what makes this campaign the most interesting to me. It’s the way Hellmann’s tried to get bloggers to drive more people to the site.

When the site launched, Hellmann’s sent e-mails to a bunch of food bloggers inviting them to the site, in hopes they would write about it. Well, some of them did. And some of the comments were nice, but others were quite naughty.

The lesson here, as if we didn’t already know, is that when you invite consumers to participate in your marketing, you can’t expect them to behave like your agency (which can be a good thing or a bad thing, I guess).

Here’s hoping you all will be enjoying some real food over the Labor Day Weekend.