Collective Bias Powers Marie Callender's Family Meal Recommendations

BENTONVILLE, Ark., Nov. 10, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Collective Bias, creator of the Social Fabric™ influencer platform, has launched its newest community to power family meal recommendations for the ConAgra Foods' Marie Callender's frozen foods brand. This effort represents the first convergence of traditional advertising, social media, mobile and location-based marketing to drive in-store sales.

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ConAgra Foods is using Whrrl's mobile, social and location capabilities to connect with USA WEEKEND Magazine's 47 million readers in-store. Readers who check into retail locations such as Walmart and Target will have the opportunity to join the "Family Meals" Society and view relevant recommendations, tips and recipes to assist with purchase decisions in real-time. Additionally, readers will have exclusive chances to win daily prizes including shopping gift cards, movie tickets and electronics.

Collective Bias powered the creation of the Family Meals Society by sending Social Fabric members in-store prior to USA WEEKEND Magazine's publication of the ConAgra Foods ad on November 7th. While shopping for Marie Callender's frozen meals and pies, community members seeded the Society with recommendations for their favorite Marie Callender's products to help other shoppers find easy-to-prepare Family Meal Solutions.

"Collective Bias is executing against the next big social media trend," said John Kim, Vice President of Product for Pelago. "Most brand social activity to-date has been oriented around PR, customer feedback and viral experiments. Brands need to organize communities to power contextual services that are valuable to consumers."

"Our community produces real shopper media that connects brands to their customers during the planning process, while shopping in-store and then back at home when people actually using the products they purchased," said John Andrews, CEO of Collective Bias. "Whrrl gives Social Fabric members, who already produce a variety of content across their blogs and other social media platforms, with a way of sharing their experiences at the store shelf with readers in a very authentic and personal way. USA WEEKEND provides the perfect broadcast platform to introduce a large number of American consumers to this rich content and platform for social discovery."

While traditional shopper marketing focuses primarily on analog and paper-based solutions, recent Nielsen research projects that smart phone penetrations will reach 51% by the third quarter of 2011. The combined Collective Bias/Whrrl/USA WEEKEND offering promises digital media-like capabilities that take advantage of the shopper's changing technical and social profile.

USA WEEKEND readers can follow all the Society recommendations at http://whrrl.com/family and view additional Social Fabric content at http://familymeals.us.

About Collective Bias

Collective Bias, a shopper media agency, builds true relationships between brands, retailers and consumers through its proprietary social influencer platform called Social Fabric. The Social Fabric community drives conversations on a wide variety of social media platforms in order to build consumer engagement and brand loyalty that lead to sales conversion. For more information, visit http://www.collectivebias.com.

About Pelago, Makers of Whrrl

Pelago was founded to revolutionize the way people experience and explore the physical world.  Whrrl, the company's flagship product, is a real-world game with a purpose- to help people escape from behind their computers and patterned lives, to get back out into the physical world with the promise of compelling, highly relevant new experiences.  The company was founded in 2006, is based in Seattle, and is led by an executive team from companies including Amazon.com, RealNetworks and Yahoo. Pelago is backed by pioneering Internet and mobile investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bezos Expeditions, T-Venture, Trilogy Equity Partners and Reliance Technology Ventures.  For more information, visit www.pelago.com.

About USA WEEKEND

Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2010, USA WEEKEND is a national weekly newspaper magazine with 22.6 million circulation and 47 million readers in print and online.  It is distributed through more than 800 newspapers. Awarded for its journalism and design, USA WEEKEND focuses on social issues, entertainment, health, food and travel. It has an expanded presence in the social media arena with active participation on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. USA WEEKEND is a Gannett Co. Inc. publication.

SOURCE Collective Bias