Dairy producer The Collective has embraced social media as its major marketing channel

The Collective, which markets primarily through Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, has gone from a staff of seven to 40 since launching and is one of the fastest-growing companies in New Zealand.

It was founded in November 2009 by chefs Angus Allan and Ofer Shenhav. Allan was the creator of Naked Organics and Ofer of Pitango Organic Cuisine, but the two former competitors decided to join forces and purchased the boutique Canaan Cheese business. After a crash-course in manufacturing dairy, it launched its range of soft cultured cheeses and haloumi in February 2010, followed by its gourmet yoghurt range in May 2010.

Allan says the marketing strategy has always been “to develop a fun brand and persona that is serious about what it makes”. From there the strategy grew and was all about ensuring the loyal community – or as he refers to it, ‘the herd’, which numbers around 3,400 on Facebook – was looked after.

“The key is showing a genuine personality and interest in the herd,” he says. “It’s the balance between having fun, sharing news, interacting and thanking our consumers. With all our communications we want to drive people to us, not drive people crazy. We don’t need to incentivise people for liking us; we want them to like us because they really, really do. We are very community driven and take social media and the people who are listening to us seriously.”

And, as well as creating a quality product, that approach appears to have paid dividends. Today, The Collective is New Zealand’s leading gourmet yoghurt brand – and it’s still growing (at around 250 percent, as evidenced by its 28th placing in last year’s Deloitte Fast 50).

And with product now stocked in Australia, Singapore, Spain, France, Hong-Kong and the United Kingdom, the word – and the herd – is spreading quickly. The company hopes to move into other markets like Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Germany, with a projection to achieve global sales of $30 million by June 2012, $100 million by 2013, $250 million by 2014 and $400 million by 2015.

The Collective’s distinctive ‘Cow’ logo and subsequent ‘…no bull!’ taglines were developed in collaboration with design company pHd3, which was also involved in the ecostore rebrand. The packaging won a bronze Pent Award in the food, dairy products category, one of only three awards for that category. And it also secured two further awards at last year’s New Zealand Best Awards for Graphic Design Identity Development (small scale) and Graphic Design Packaging.

As for the Social Brands 100 list, Innocent took number one position.

The UK-based food and drinks brand that Coca-Cola has bought a majority share in made its name with packaging that spoke directly to its customers, and it was one of over 300 brands nominated following a crowdsourced nomination process on Twitter that took place in January. The report found that the best performing brands have a genuine, human voice on social platforms and aren’t afraid to get personal.