New Moon Kitchen and Blogger Outreach

September 23rd, 2008 Posted in Social Media

I’ve tried to write this post several times, but failed each attempt. I think I was just trying to say too much. So, to make my job easier, I’ve culled it down to my two main points: the winner and the loser.

Disclaimer: I am friends with the New Moon Kitchen employee who initiated and followed through with the outreach.

The Winner - New Moon Kitchen

They stuck their necks out there and tried the blogger outreach thing. They sent cookies to a bunch of bloggers they thought might be interested in writing about the cookies. They also sent cookies to a few people they didn’t follow, but who talked about the subject of healthy eating.

There was a negative review and New Moon handled it like the pros. The concern was that the chocolate chip cookies contained refined sugar (filtered through bone char) and vanillin (a petro-based chemical that tastes like vanilla).

New Moon Kitchen’s response was to encourage more feedback. They also looked into chocolate chips suppliers and discovered a chip that was both refined sugar and vanillin free.

Note: Their products are already dairy free, egg free, nut and peanut free, kosher parve and (except for the five products that contained the offending chocolate ships) vegan.

The Loot: Not only did New Moon Kitchen gain some insight, a new audience and an an article on Treehugger (one of the biggest, if not the biggest, health-oriented/environmental/sustainability/green blogs out there), but they also used the feedback they received to improve their product line.

The Loser - Almost Vegetarian

This is the blog that blew the whistle on the chocolate chips. I really feel that this is exactly what this space is all about, but the tone and tact with which Almost Vegetarian brought up her concerns wasn’t very… constructive.

I get the impression that she doesn’t really understand the space either. The blogosphere is about community, conversation and transparency. She subverts these by filtering the comments she doesn’t agree with and providing a very one-sided view. I don’t mind filtering comments to keep the crazies out, but when you are trying to participate in a two-sided conversation and only some of your responses are being posted that kind of undermines the idea of a conversation. I guess she wanted the last word. (Makes me think a bit of a certain Fox celebrity.) But I suppose it is her space and she can do with it as she likes.

She then continued her campaign even after the issue had been addressed and resolved. Not only that, but she took her campaign to other peoples blogs.  Zoe recieved one of these unsolicited comments on her blog.

Zoe’s response says it all (follow the link and scroll all the way down).