Several bolggers have already pointed to Rick Bruner’s case study on Stonyfield Farm’s blogs. It’s a good b2b read though.
I think that The 1st time I saw Rick, he introduced the conference to Nick Usborne’s Forkinthehead.com. But, I digress…
Business Blog Case Study: Stonyfield Farm
2) What was the thinking behind launching the blogs in the first place?
Our company has experienced phenomenal growth, and we have a certain "personality" in the world–we care about the environment; about healthy food; about supporting family farms. With growth, we fear losing touch with what is a very loyal and committed customer base, and so our CEO, Gary Hirshberg, saw the blogs as a way to continue to personalize our relationship with our customers. He wants to "be real" and saw the blogs as a way to do that–inspired in part by the success of blogs within the Howard Dean presidential bid of early 2004.
3) What is the business rationale? What are you trying to accomplish from a marketing perspective (or otherwise)?
See the above. Again, we want to maintain a close relationship with our customers. As organics grows to be mainstream, we want to show how our brand is in fact different, and invite our readers/customers in to help us do that and participate with us in our struggles and triumphs, to the extent possible. Our blogs "continue the conversation" we’ve had with our readers/customers since the beginning in 1987, when we had 7 cows and a great yogurt recipe. Today we produce 18 million cups of yogurt a month!