Social Listening: Crumble Cookie

    Although a recent company, Crumble Cookie has soared in popularity over the last few years. A big portion of this popularity is due to their massive presence on social media. With accounts on Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, they are constantly putting out content about their new weekly cookies. Crumble Cookie seems to have surrounded their product with different techniques of marketing. With having a straight forward product, like a cookie, there needs to be a certain angle at which to go about selling it. Crumble has taking the angle of being content driven, and it seems at times that their cookie is just a by product you get when you indulge in the experience of the business. Crumble has a weekly rotation of four cookies with an addition of two that are always up for sale. As this seems almost restrictive it also sets up Crumble to produce fresh, new content every week. 

    With Crumble Cookie's value proposition being, to bring friends and family together over a box of the best cookies in the world, it's no secret that the company wants to develop a community around their cookies. They have a slue of people who post weekly reviews of the new cookies that come out which further spreads their brand. This could be seen as a form of earned media as these individuals post videos on their own behalf. Along with these videos there are always lots of comments on their Instagram and Tik Tok feed about the new flavors of cookies. Usually, these comments are mostly positive about the upcoming flavors.

    Crumble has a consistency in replying to comments on their Instagram which creates a more personal and relatable experience for the customer. I see comments, like this one to the right, under all their posts revealing new cookies, and almost always there is a upbeat reply from Crumble. Their connection with customers is what sets them apart from other cookie companies. 

    Although Crumble sets time aside to reply to comments that are upbeat and positive, it seems they have a tendency to brush off or just not reply all together to the more negative comments. 

    I found this review on Facebook and on the surface it may seem like a slightly negative review about someone not getting a great experience at a Crumble Cookie location. The real problem here is that I could not a find a reply from Crumble on this person's comment. What this says to me about the company is that they are only willing to reply to comments that are in agreement with the company. Crumble could have very easily replied with a "sorry you didn't have a great experience," which would have at least given the person a sense of interest in their negative feedback. 

    After exploring more negative comments I ended up finding some replies by Crumble, but those comments never really addressed the customers critique. The replies from Crumble seemed fake at times, like they were ignoring the person's thoughts and just trying to show the world that they will reply to customers on social media. 

    I can see how some may disagree with my opinion on this but to me this response to the right from Crumble seems like they turned the comment around and put it on the customer. In reality it may be the person just not "vibing" with the cookie but a big company like Crumble will benefit more if they said something like, "sorry to hear that, how can we make it better next time?" To me this gives people more of a sense of connection and personal tones from the company and lets them know that they want to here feedback from their customers. 

    Crumble Cookie has created a big company in just 5 years (company was launched in 2017), they stay consistent on posting content to multiple different platforms and they always reply to comments so they can give the customers a sense of connection. This company is obviously doing something right but there are a few areas in which I believe they can improve. If I was the brand manager I would try to come up with replies to comments that were a little more personal, especially the negative ones. It's very important to a big company to be seen as humble and friendly by it's customers. I think by addressing negative comments more personally and saying things like "how can we improve on this cookie?" will help further drive home their recognition for replying to customers and allowing feedback on their "perfect" cookies. 

    I learned from this project that a new company like Crumble can soar in success in a short time period, but only if they do things based on the new ways of marketing. A big part of this new form of marketing is making content for your customers and staying connected to them on social media.