Woolworths held ransom by web entrepreneur

Two weeks ago Yuppiechef.co.za, a feisty, fast-growing online kitchen tool store, had an opportunity fall into their laps that small entrepreneurial companies dream of: the chance to go head to head in public with a large corporate, David-and-Goliath-style, and hold Woolworths ransom using social media. It began with a misspelled web address in a Woolies advertising campaign and turned into an ingenious, unplanned viral campaign that raised R100 000 for the charity Soil for Life in 14 days.

When Woolworths launched their “Tweet Your Love” Valentine’s Day campaign, couples were invited to register at www.woolieslovebird.co.za to stand a chance of winning R50 000, they didn’t realise something was amiss.

The day the campaign launched, Shane Dryden, a director at Yuppiechef, was intrigued to take a peek at Woolworths’ first major step into the social media space. After several failed attempts to access the website, the Yuppiechef founder realised Woolworths’ mistake: they had left an ‘s’ off the end of the web address and advertised this incorrect address on posters throughout their national network of stores.

Unluckily for Woolworths, the advertised address was still available for registration, so Shane and the Yuppiechef team registered it and directed the visitors to Yuppiechef.co.za. They then had to decide what to do with this hot, yet particularly illegal piece of property.

After a quick discussion, the Yuppiechef team took the risqué decision to hold the web address ransom to raise money and awareness for the charity Soil for Life, who work in underprivileged communities, teaching people to grow vegetable gardens from which they feed themselves, their families and their communities.

The Yuppiechef team posted a picture of two of the Woolworths lovebirds in a cage on their website along with a ransom note coated with humour in which they demanded that Woolworths match rand for rand what any Yuppiechef fan donated to Soil for Life up to R5 000 “or the lovebirds get it”.

Paul Galatis, marketing director and partner at Yuppiechef, then announced the ransom to their 10 000 Yuppiechef fans via email, Twitter and Facebook and started social media networks chattering. The news spread and donations started to roll in.

“We were told by everyone to hold our breaths and were warned that Woolies would soon be at our door with lawyers and big sticks. We knew they were going to find out about the ransom the same way that everyone else was – on Twitter – so all we had to do was put the message out there and wait for their call,” said Paul Galatis.

After what is understood to have been a few hours of internal panic, Woolworths decided not to send in the lawyers. Instead, they chose to pay Yuppiechef the R5 000 ransom towards Soil for Life in the spirit in which the ransom was posted.

They contributed an additional R2 500 to the charity, winning much favour in social media circles for their response to the situation. The campaign started to spread far faster than the Yuppiechef team ever imagined.

In two days, R8 000 had been raised when the story broke on Cape Talk. By day four, the total reached R25 000. Soon, other traditional media picked up on the story and Paul Galatis was interviewed on Jeremy Mansfield’s The Rude Awakening breakfast show on Highveld Stereo. Jeremy helped raise further awareness, encouraging corporates to get on board.

Immediately after that interview, Philips SA and Sanlam Developing Markets each donated R10 000 to the campaign. Over the next week, the campaign was covered by CNBC Africa’s Media & Money, SAfm, Mail & Guardian, The Daily Maverick, Jeremy Maggs’ Maggs on Media, and Classic FM as well as being featured extensively on BizCommunity and Fin24.

Hello World Agency did their part for charity and offered their support to the campaign, creating further awareness and publicity around it, using traditional and new publicity channels.

Danni Vos, CEO of Hello World Agency says, “This case shows that the South African audience appreciates honesty and humour and that companies who support charities can make a tangible difference through highly visible channels such as social media with little or no budget”.

Numerous commentators have had their say on the matter putting Yuppiechef and Soil for Life in the spotlight; from copyright and patent lawyers, Adams & Adams, who posted an article making it clear that legally, Woolies could have taken Yuppiechef to task had they felt so inclined, to BizCommunity who posted an article titled, “Ambush marketing at its best”.

As the exposure continued, Standard Bank and Fin24 each donated R10 000 to the cause, helping to bring the total raised to R100 000 by Valentine’s Day. Since then, the Table Bay Hotel has donated R11 500 and a private donation from the United Kingdom has brought the total to R116 500.

Yuppiechef will continue to raise funds for and create awareness of Soil for Life throughout the year.

Individuals and companies who would like to donate or support Soil for Life at any stage in 2010 can contact Paul Galatis on +27 (0)21 702 4969 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Soil For Life can be contacted directly on +27 (0)21 794 49 82.

Anyone can donate from as little as R25 through the Yuppiechef website by visiting www.yuppiechef.co.za.

See the original ransom note and blog post here: www.bit.ly/birdblog.

This small stroke of luck and opportunism has brought more PR exposure than could have been imagined to both Soil for Life and the small, fast-growing premium kitchen tool store, Yuppiechef.co.za.