Frozen yoghurt brand Wakaberry celebrated its 2nd birthday on 22 May and with it, its growing online community – an impressive achievement for a relatively new food brand in South Africa.
In two years Wakaberry bars have grown from one flagship store in Florida Road, Durban to 15 stores in four provinces and will open five more stores in the next month.
Wakaberry has set the benchmark for other “˜new‘ brands aiming to market themselves on digital platforms. The Facebook page was launched when Wakaberry opened its first store in May 2011 and in two years has over 70, 000 followers with hundreds joining every week. The page actively markets new stores, flavours, merchandise and events with regular updates and an overall emphasis on real engagement that evokes reaction and creates interaction.
The Twitter stream @Wakaberry_1 has 11, 400 followers from which the company responds to queries, publicises events and promotions and engages in real time with the consumers AKA Wakafans.
In line with this digital strategy the Wakaberry team launched a mobi-site on MHub. The site went live in December 2012 and has attracted 50, 000 unique users (as of Thursday 16 May) making it the busiest site on MHub far out weighing the 1, 500 unique users average for a mobi-site that has been live for the same period.
“œWhen we started Wakaberry we were determined to create a brand that really spoke to our customers. We wanted to offer both a consistent, memorable experience with stores that was authentic and fun and a superior real yoghurt product ““ it was never a question of one or the other,“ says co-founder and director, Michele Fourie. “œI believe that this is what keeps our customers coming back for more and has helped us build our phenomenal online community.“
As part of the birthday celebrations this week Wakaberry are launching two brand new mobile Wakaberry units at Grand Designs in Johannesburg and The Good Food & Wine Show in Cape Town.
