Every business believes that to know their product is to love their product.

But how can a business identify and communicate with an interested, influential group of people; enable them to learn about and experience a product; and encourage them to share their positive views with others? And why would people do this voluntarily and within only a few weeks?

Yooster (named after the customer-driven notion “you steer”) is the answer. The culmination of our thinking and practical experience, Yooster uses a product-focused ‘pull’ rather than an ad-focused ‘push’ approach to inspire peer-driven advocacy for brands and their products.

Yooster was launched in Australia in 2006 and in the UK in 2009. It consists of an online research and communications technology platform, and a campaign methodology that incorporates marketing, customer relationship management, product sampling and research techniques.

Yooster significantly increases people’s likelihood to recommend and to purchase products, a fact proven by our pre- and post-experience campaign metrics: on average, 75% of Yooster campaign respondents say they are ‘very likely’ to buy the product after their Yooster experience; and 72% of Yooster campaign respondents’ secondary contacts react positively to the product in question, with 53% ‘very likely’ to buy it due to advocacy from Yooster campaign participants.

How does Yooster work?
Yooster can be used to test, pre-launch, launch, develop, or enhance products, services and marketing messages in any business sector. It brings together two groups:

1. Businesses that want to connect and collaborate with targeted influencers cost-effectively, in order to generate measurable advocacy and ongoing growth for their brands and products.

2. An online panel of customers or consumers who are interested in being given privileged free access to new and existing products and services, being able to influence the business decisions of the brand in question, and who are keen to share their experiences and honest opinions with their peers.

Yooster first builds and profiles an online panel consisting of a brand’s most influential and socially active customers. Yooster then invites a relevant subset of the panel to experience a product first-hand exclusively and free; educates them about its raison d’être; encourages them to form their own opinions; enables them to help shape product development and marketing decisions through online surveys and polls; and inspires them to share their experience and views with other interested people – spreading advocacy to kickstart growth.

With this ability to leverage customer relationships in many different ways, and to generate and measure advocacy and its resulting initial business growth, Yooster is different from traditional opinion panels that are used only to research customer satisfaction and potential business needs.

In addition, people in multiple roles and functions throughout a business – such as R&D, HR, CSR, Brand Marketing and Strategic Planning – can be linked using the Yooster engagement platform, sharing information about internal initiatives and generating insight and support for them.

Who uses Yooster?
In the UK, major brands that have commissioned white-label versions of Yooster include British Gas, whose online Yooster presence can be seen here, and T-Mobile UK, whose Yooster panel site can be seen here.

Yooster’s Australasian clients include Allens, Beiersdorf, Birds Eye, Brewtopia, Blackmores, Colgate, Nestlé, nineMSN, Unilever and more. You can read some Yooster case studies here.

Please contact us to discuss your customer participation programme requirements and to commission our services.