This is a project that analyzed Whole Foods current Social Media strategy and identified growth opportunities. We then provided solutions to go after the opportunities we identified. You can see an accompanying commercial here: http://vimeo.com/16305076

1. Whole Foods Social Media
Strategy
Salina Chan
Rainey Jernigan
Eric Katz
Tazmun Nahar
Ross Simons

2. Whole Foods Market is one of America’s leading supermarkets specializing in natural
and organic products. Through the company’s commitment to localized suppliers, Whole Foods
is able to provide consumers with fresh, health-conscious foods. With the recent social trend
towards health-conscious eating habits, Whole Foods is becoming increasingly popular as a store
and a lifestyle.
Whole Foods’ mantra, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet” promotes the well-being
of the company, those who work for Whole Foods, and the successful utilization of the Earth’s
natural resources in order to achieve company profit and growth. Following these three basic
principles, Whole Foods has also cultivated seven company objectives:
1. Selling the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Products Available
2. Satisfying and Delighting Our Customers
3. Supporting Team Member Happiness and Excellence
4. Creating Wealth Through Profits & Growth
5. Caring about our Communities & Our Environment
6. Creating ongoing win-win partnerships with our suppliers
7. Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education.
As a company committed to healthy living and eating, Whole Foods promotes not only a
set of products, but a way of living. Their already extensive use of social media feeds into the
lifestyle image Whole Foods promotes through their products and promotions. Considered a
pioneer in their commitment to the use of social media, Whole Foods has already gained a strong
following on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube. Not to mention, there is a regularly
updated company blog and iPhone mobile application as well as an official website,

3. www.wholefoodsmarket.com. While Whole Foods has many Web 2.0 outlets, each is aimed to
highlight a different aspect of their company.
According to Bill Tolany, Head of Integrated Media at Whole Foods, social media has
grown to become considered marketing and communications. With this in mind, he has outlined
four goals for social media at Whole Foods. First, he wants Whole Foods to “be where the
customers are” (“Just Because”). He wants customers to be able to reach Whole Foods with little
effort thus, Whole Foods is on almost every popular social media medium. This then aligns with
the second goal of increasing the quantity and quality of customer interactions. Another goal is to
be able to measure the number of times that Whole Foods is mentioned on the net. There is no
way to measure how many times an individual shops at Whole Foods so measuring how much
they talk about Whole Foods is the next best strategy. The last goal that Tolany has for social
media is “to help improve customers’ lives in some way” (“Just Because”). Our goal for
integrating social media at Whole Foods is to help make the customers’ shopping experience
easier and more efficient thus, improving their lives.
There are many things that Whole Foods is already doing well on the social media front.
Whole Foods is doing well promoting their current use of social media; at the top of the Whole
Foods company website, www.wholefoodsmarket.com, there is a “Talk to Us” section (See
Exhibit 1A) that lists four different mediums (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and the Whole People
Blog). Another strategy that has been working really well for them is having niche Facebook and
Twitter accounts (See Exhibits 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E). With the Twitter accounts, they have some
specialized ones according to their company’s specialty items, such as @WFMCheese,
@WFMWineGuys, as well as a Twitter account promoting specialized recipes aligned with their
company’s values, @WholeRecipes. Having these niche accounts allows them to do targeted

4. marketing for their promotional events. Also,Whole Foods has a Flickr (See Exhibit 1F) account
dedicated to capturing these promotional events for all to view and comment on. On another
note, the Whole People blog (See Exhibit 1G), advertised at the top of their website, adds
personality to company. The regular updates shed light onto the company culture, and make their
customer feel closer to the people they are purchasing from. Due to their impressive, routine
updates and intriguing blog posts, the Whole People Blog has gained a large following.
Not only can social media be used to promote Whole Foods as a whole, but it can also be
used to address their issues and opportunities.One opportunity we discovered is to improving
brand image. Another is to clarify false, preconceived notions that consumers might have about
the Whole Foods brand, (for example, Whole Foods gaining higher profits from sales than the
industry standard). Lastly, Whole Foods could use social media to inform people of current
company proceedings, which can also tie into improving the brand image.
Through our analysis of Whole Food’s current use of social media, we have devised four
campaigns to address the aforementioned opportunities for Whole Foods. First, we’d like address
the mobile application market. Next, we have developed a campaign surrounded around a
community crop swapping program. Third, we would like to create a cooking community that
ties into the ideals set by the Whole Foods company and their lifestyle guidelines. Fourth, a
campaign dedicated to informing consumers about what Whole Foods does already and will do
in the future.
Whole Foods currently has a well-developed iPhone mobile application. This app is very
user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. The buttons and features are clear to the average
technology user. Also, these features are geared toward the typical shopper at Whole Foods. One
aspect of the app is “locations” where the user can locate the nearest Whole Foods. This feature,

5. using GPS, determines where the user currently is, and then finds Whole Foods locations closest
to them and displays them on a map (See Exhibit 2A). Another good feature that they have is the
“On Hand” section. This allows the user to enter three ingredients that they have in their pantry,
which then allows the app to suggest recipes that include said ingredients (See Exhibit 2B). This
promotes healthy cooking and resourcefulness, which are values of the company. The application
also has a recipe finder where the user can type in an item, for example, “pumpkin,” and get
recipes from the Whole Foods kitchen (See Exhibit 2C). There is also a “shopping list” feature
where the customer can write items they need from the store, and check off purchased items as
they shop(See Exhibit 2D). While the app has a base of quality features, there are several
additions we feel would improve the value of this mobile application.
Currently, the application has a “recipe search”, but does not have an item search. We
feel that it is important for Whole Foods to add this feature. This would allow a customer to look
up the item they are looking for, for example,“granola bar,” and see all of the granola bars that
Whole Foods offers. Embedded in the app will be automatic coupon alerts that will notify
customers of deals based on the products they scan or search for. When they search “granola
bar”, a window could pop up and say “2 for 1 on Chewy Granola Bars”. Once they find the item
in the search box, and find any coupons available, they can add the item to their “shopping list”
(See Exhibit 3A). This is another way for Whole Foods to reach out to their customers. They can
also track who is using the app by measuring who uses the coupons from the app (they would
have a specific code), and generate metrics about how often the application is used.
Briefly mentioned before, the “shopping list” section is already included in this
application, but we feel a barcode scanner could add benefits to the consumer. This way,
customers can scan their loyalty card as well as scan items to check them off of their shopping

6. list (see Exhibit 3B). Having a loyalty card scannable by your iPhone, customers would be able
to see the rewards they get before they buy. This is because when the user scans his or her card, a
window will pop up saying how many “points” they have, which coupons they can use, and their
most bought items. Knowing what the customer buys the most will let Whole Foods target them
by giving them coupons and advertisements. Perhaps more importantly, a barcode scanner
feature paired with a loyalty card will allow Whole Foods to track the purchasing habits of their
customers. Having a loyalty program implemented via a loyalty card will allow Whole Foods to
track the most frequent and largest spending customers; by having this card scannable through
the mobile app, this new card and program will not be a burden to the consumer.
To feature Whole Foods’ value of eating locally and healthfully, we have decided to add
a feature to the appthat can tell the user what items may be in season in their area. This will be
addressed by our “What’s in season?” section. The user can put in their zip code, or allow GPS
to track their area, and then select the current season. The application will then make a list of
everything that is in season in their area, at that particular time of year. The user can then click
on a particular item, and add it to their shopping list (see Exhibit 3C).
Users of the Whole Foods app are likely already customers of Whole Foods itself.
However, most people who do not shop at Whole Foods think that it is too expensive. We want
to show users that organic and healthy items can be purchased on a budget. Therefore, we will
add an “On a budget?” section. The user can type in how much money they have available to
spend, and the application will come up with a combination of things that they can buy (See
Exhibit 3D). By incorporating previous purchasing habits (via the loyalty card), this section will
be able to generate recommendations relevant to the users buying preferences. This improvement
will show users that you can shop on a budget at Whole Foods, and improve the brand image

7. from that of an expensive organic store.
Our additions to the existing Whole Foods mobile app will give users new features that
will benefit their shopping experience, give Whole Foods a new way to track customers, and
promote the brand image. Although we feel that updating the iPhone App will help usage a lot,
we know this will not be enough. They have not even tapped into the other parts of the smart
phone market, and we feel that expanding their application to other phones will greatly increase
the likelihood of success for the Whole Foods application..
Now that the suggested improvements to the iPhone mobile application have been
delineated, we can analyze the additional mobile app markets Whole Foods should consider. The
iPhone worldwide smart-phone sales to end user in 2009 were 14.4% of the market.
Comparatively, the blackberry, produced by RIM, had 19.9% of the market and the Android,
produced by Google, had 3.9% of the market (see Exhibit 4). The four firm market concentration
ratio of worldwide smartphone sales shows that Nokia phones (not currently “smart”),
Blackberry’s, Apples and Androids are collectively an oligopoly with “low” concentration levels
between 40% and 50% amongst the top four players.
While Blackberry is the second largest oligopoly player (and the largest smart phone
player) in the market, Android is the favorable star and new entrant into the market. The Android
platform is a free smart phone technology platform that Google is distributing. It is expected to
capture significant market share over the next three to five years. For these reasons, it makes
sense for Whole Foods to expand their mobile application into the Blackberry and Android
markets.
Furthermore, an overview of the smart phone operating systems and application stores as
of March 2010 reveals that Apple has over 185,000 apps. Comparatively, Android has 30,000

8. apps and Blackberry has 6,000 apps. Whole Foods has already become a top-rated app in the
Apple App Store. If Whole Foods expands into the Blackberry and Android markets, they will be
able to more easily position themselves as one of the top Food apps, if not a top app overall (only
6,000 other competitors with Blackberry and 30,000 other competitors with Android). From a
broad point of view, expansion will allow Whole Foods to tap an additional 25% of the global
smart phone users.
While it makes sense for Whole Foods to expand into the Blackberry and Android mobile
application markets, there are several factors that must be considered. The first factor is the what
information Whole Foods will be able to monitor. The online downloading of apps makes it
extremely easy for any application provider to track their success. Whole Foods can easily track
the total app downloads for each phone type, the average user ratings, the total number of
ratings, and user complaints and satisfaction rating responses. Perhaps most importantly,
however, Whole Foods will be able to track the purchasing habits of their buyers (by linking the
phone app to a customer loyalty card). This opens up a massive realm for location based
marketing and advertising services that Whole Foods can get a head start on.
The second set of factors to consider are implementation criteria. To gain widespread
user-ship of the Blackberry and Android apps, Whole Foods should hold an exclusive employee
launch party at each Whole Foods location. The party would serve to educate all employees
about the new app, encourage employees with the appropriate smart phones to download the app,
and give employees the exclusive right to share the app (at least initially) with their friends and
family. This exclusivity connected with the app will generate user interest. Gradually, Whole
Foods can make the app publicly available and easily download-able (after gaining traction with
the employee app sharing initiative).

9. The third and crucial aspect to consider for the app expansion is the challenges that will
be faced. After reading through over 150 user ratings of the iPhone Whole Foods app, there were
two general problems that users reported. First, the app crashed often and updates were not
available to solve the problem. This means that Whole Foods will have to invest additional
capital into an update that will solve crash-related problems.The second problem reported was
that the recipes available largely excluded the dairy-free, vegan, and gluten-free communities. To
overcome this challenge, Whole Foods must focus its efforts on creating a platform to allow
users to easily submit their own recipes and have other users rate the recipes. Over time, this will
allow for the best user-created recipes to rise to the top and will ultimately increase the variety
and total number of recipes available. Crowd-sourcing recipes from the existing Whole Foods
app user base is critical to the future success of the app.
Not only have we developed a campaign to improve their existing mobile app, we have
also devised a way to integrate all users into a virtual community based on their cooking
interests. Our idea to implement a cooking community will be preceded by a cooking show
contest. The cooking community is a community of user-generated cooking shows (meals, tip
videos, etc). To introduce the cooking show contest, we will first discuss the issues that would
arise from the cooking community. The first issue that arises is how to get quality
submissions to the community, especially for a time-intensive video such as a cooking show.
Second, it can take a long time to build up a group of users of the community. Third, the
community (ratings, hierarchy of videos, favorite users, etc.) can take a long time to develop.
Fourth, what outlets will be necessary to successfully promote the community.
This cooking contest would elegantly bypass all of these challenges by providing
incentives to those who submit high quality submissions, which could then be rated, organized,

10. and ready to be placed into the community after the conclusion of the contest. To begin, we will
discuss the logistics of the cooking show contest. All submissions will be subject to a number of
guidelines (See Exhibit 5 - includes a flyer):
1. Most ingredients (except for breads, pastas) must be fresh, and not pre-made, out of a can
and/or bought (ready-made) from Whole Foods.
2. Every meal has to be under $15 and be able to feed two people. Proof of purchase required
3. The videos must be edited down to 10 minutes, but the shorter the better.
4. At the beginning of the video, you must say your favorite thing about Whole Foods.
We realize that, in order to to obtain quality submissions, we must provide unique and
fulfilling incentives. With the significantly lower costs of a social media marketing campaign,
we plan to use that extra money to provide better incentives than most contests do. The grand
prize winner will receive a $5,000 shopping card to Whole Foods and will get their ingredients
made into a $15 pre-packaged meal complete with written recipe instructions and marketed as
the winning meal within Whole Foods stores. The winner will receive a percentage of the profit
off of every one of these packages sold (10-20%) for the 3 months following it’s inclusion in
stores. The second place winner would win $3,000 worth of Whole Foods goods and have the
opportunity to cook the meal in the hot food sections of the stores. Whole Foods has certain days
out of the year where they pledge 5% of their revenue to charity. On these days, the second prize
winner would be allowed to cook their meal, getting paid the industry standard for a cook. This
would also hopefully create an activity that would draw more consumers to the store and thus
create higher revenue and higher donations. The third place winner will receive a $2,000
shopping card to Whole Foods and a reserved parking space at their local Whole Foods. In
addition, every person who submits a video will receive a coupon of 20% off $50 spent at Whole

11. Foods. The idea behind these really unique prizes is that they will create steam for the contest by
themselves and hopefully garner unsolicited media attention, becoming viral by intriguing
viewers. After the contest, there will be regular contests (bi-weekly or monthly) in which the 3
top-rated new submissions of the past 2 months prior will receive a $500 shopping card to Whole
foods. Another great aspect of our prizes is that they provide great monetary profit to Whole
Foods, through the shopping cards. This program will help build an active community behind
Whole Foods and Whole Foods disciples.
There are several additional benefits to a cooking community video-submission
campaign. Whole foods does a lot of awesome things, but they do not market their
accomplishments. One of our members said that they had not previously shopped at Whole
Foods due to their prices, but after hearing about everything they do, the team member said they
would be more likely to overlook price to help the Whole Foods cause. Because of this, we
realize that increasing knowledge of the Whole Foods core values will broaden their customer
base, and increase sales. Consumers buy for what they believe in, not solely what product a
company is pushing. Within each video, there would be short advertisements (10 seconds or so,
much like you see in any online video). These mini-commercials would be Whole Foods
advertisements that inform customers about what Whole Foods is doing behind the scenes, rather
than promoting a new product. They would be based around the theme “Did You Know?” and
would convey a short fact about Whole Foods many people may not know. (Refer to exhibit 7
for examples of Did You Know?)..This would be an ongoing initiative that would be included in
every video in the contest. We see the cooking community as a perfect opportunity to really
influence perceived value, brand loyalty, and to facilitate brand disciples which will thus
increase customer base.

12. Our final strategy is to create a new community that ties in closely with our cooking
community. With this idea, we wanted to create something that was extremely unique while also
promoting Whole Foods Market, Inc. values. After careful evaluation, we decided that
sustainability, buying locally grown foods, and eating healthy were three of their strongest values
to promote in their brand. Our new initiative, crop.SWAP embodies all of these values.
crop.SWAP is a home gardening/swapping online community, where local gardeners can
coordinate swapping their produce for those of other small gardeners in their area.. In regards to
Whole Foods, crop. SWAP addresses their business values in a way that many strategies do not:
selflessly. There is little direct profit incentive because Whole Foods is not making any revenue
from this project. This community is solely aimed to increase brand and value awareness for the
Whole Foods brand.
With the stereotype (and rightly so) that Whole Foods has high prices, we see an
opportunity to change the way people view the Whole Foods brand. We decided that one
ultimate business goal is for people to not think of Whole Foods as a profit-obsessed corporation
but as a social venture. Our team believes that crop.SWAP is a great step towards transforming
perception in this regard.
Crop.SWAP,besides just being an online home gardening community, will have a
number of features. First and foremost at it's core, it will be a tool for facilitating the swapping of
crops between small home gardeners. One of the barriers to home gardening is space limitation.
For those people who want to garden, a large exterior space is not always readily available. With
limited space, a potential home gardener would only be able to plant a few types of crops (ex.
cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash). The work to garden (input) would produce limited returns
(output). Many potential gardeners may not choose to partake in home gardening because of

13. these restrictions. crop.SWAP seeks to move past these barriers through collaboration. If user A
only has space to grow cucumbers and tomatoes, they can go onto crop.SWAP and find user B
willing to trade apples for cucumbers. This community would essentially seek to take a large
number of farmers specializing in specific crops, and bring them all together to create a huge
community farm in which all active members have access to the output. Within the community,
there would be a search function built upon google maps. User A could search for apples and the
map would places markers on all the active swappers with apples available.
In addition to the core functions, crop.SWAP can also operate as a support community.
First, there would be a forum in which people could communicate amongst themselves.
Examples of possible posts would be "Home gardening 101", "Does anyone know of alternatives
to pesticides?", "How do you know when cucumbers are ripe?", etc. In addition, there would also
be blogs for members who want to speak about something to the community in a more long form
manner. Examples would be "10 awesome ways to use citrus", "Beware of these 8 chemicals
when buying pesticides, fertilizers, and more." All blog posts could be rated, commented on,
linked to, tagged, and used as a connection to the author.
There are some potential challenges to this plan. One of these would be promotion. We
would promote this through our Did You Know? strategy. It would also be promoted in stores
through posters. In addition, for every purchase over $20 in Whole Foods stores, the store would
give a small package of seeds for things that are easy to grow (like parsley, basil, spinach, etc.)
with a label pointing them to the community website. This package would be designed to be
crops that are easy to grow even indoors with a very low time commitment to make it easy for a
potential gardener to start and begin utilizing the community. This will hopefully snowball and
give people the "gardening bug".

14. One of the other issues we thought of, that was brought up in the Q&A section of our
presentation was the potential problem that consumers (non-growers) may essentially use this to
bypass buying from Whole Foods and finding local gardeners to buy from instead, which would
have a negative impact of Whole Foods business. Another issue is how to stop farmers from
utilizing the site to find consumers and taking the site out of the hands of actual home gardeners.
Our intent of this community is for it to be utilized specifically by gardeners, not farmers.
We have came up with a solution to both of these issues. We would implement a credits
system to police this. A member of the community would list their crops for trade, and each item
would be given credit. For typical crops such as a tomato, or a cucumber, the user would receive
one point. For others such as watermelon, they would receive more points as they are a higher
value crop which take more space per output. The point(s) would be allocated for each of these
items so if user A has 10 tomatoes, they would receive 10 credit points. These points are then
later used to "buy" crops from other users.
This points system would allow Whole Foods to track the "sales" and user-ship of the
members. People receiving a large amount of points would be noticed by moderators and would
be looked into further to insure that they are a gardener and not a farmer. All new members
would sign an agreement that would state that one of the conditions of user-ship in the
community is that you are a small home gardener and that accounts are subject to deletion at any
time. Also, because of the nature of requiring users to be active members to receive points, it
would insure that only gardeners would have access to the community's crops.This community
provides pure, concrete, selfless promotion of the Whole Foods values, aligning with our
intentions of a value-oriented campaign.

15. Before crop.SWAP could be implemented, Whole Foods needs to find gardeners. Finding
and attracting gardeners is going to be one of their hardest jobs.One way to reach current
gardeners is via their already established social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
They can also advertise in gardening magazines. Furthermore, they can implement a referencing
system. For every person you refer, when they make their first 50 credits you will receive 10
credits to your mySWAP account.
Once implemented, there are many metrics Whole Foods could use to measure the
success of crop.SWAP. One obvious metric is the number of members registered on crop.SWAP.
Next is to measure how active these members are by keeping track of their interactions on the
forums. Another performance metric is to take a look at Whole Foods status on
www.socialmention.com before and after the implementation of crop.SWAP.
People will begin to see Whole Foods as a social venture, they would be more likely to
overlook price of goods, knowing that their money is doing so much good for their own health
and for the health of the world in general.
In conclusion, Whole Foods is dedicated to Whole People and a Whole Planet. Their
seven company objectives clearly identify what the company focuses on (both day to day and in
long term strategy decisions). Whole Foods is one of the best companies in the world at utilizing
social media to connect with and market to end users. Nonetheless, there are three areas for
improvement that our team has identified. The first improvement campaign addresses the iPhone
app and improvements that can be made, but also addresses mobile app expansion to include the
Blackberry and the Android phones. The second improvement campaign addresses creating a
cooking community that will be launched with a video-submission contest boasting attractive
prizes. The third improvement campaign addresses creating a farming community through

16. crop.SWAP to improve the Whole Foods “profit-hungry” brand image. Ultimately, we believe
that by implementing the aforementioned suggestions, Whole Foods will be able to remain a
dominant player in the grocery foods market.

17. Appendix
Exhibit 1:
A
B
C

18. D
E

19. F
G

20. Exhibit 2:
A B
C D

21. Exhibit 3:
A
B

22. C
D

23. Exhibit 4
Worldwide
Smartphone Sales
Market Share 2009
Iphone
Blackberry
Andriod
Other

24. Exhibit 5
Exhibit 6
Did you know that:
1. Whole Foods has a small farmer loan where we provide low interest, low fee, low
paperwork loans to local farmers to help them make investments?
2. Whole Foods has an international micro financing program?
3. Whole Foods gives a portion of its inventory from each store to local soup kitchens, food
pantries, and homeless shelters?
4. Whole Foods has a community devoted to promoting home gardeners, eating locally, and
sustainability called cropSWAP? Go to www.cropswap.com for more info”, etc.)
5. Several times a year, Whole Foods gives 5% of their day’s sales to charity

25. 6. Whole Foods composts all food they have left at the end of the day and sell to local
farmers
7. They have the first in-store color-coded sustainable seafood rating program launched this
fall
8. Whole Foods has the Whole Planet Foundation which fights poverty through micro
lending in rural communities around the world
Exhibit 7

26. Works Cited
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Sinek, Simon. "Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Video on TED.com."
Http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html.
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