Who all wants a doodle for their strudel?

Do you remember the days of the Toaster Strudel? I had a yearlong obsession with this not-so-healthy breakfast in elementary school. I lived for the Wildberry because it was the only strudel with blue icing. And, of course, the best part was creating a cool design with the icing.

According to an article on Mashable.com, Pillsbury’s Toaster Strudel has finally entered the social media world (just less than one month ago) joining both Facebook and Twitter. Their social campaign features a fictional boy named Hans Strudel from a fictional place called Breakfürg. Toaster Strudel asks, “How do you get your morning moving?” You tweet your answer including #StrudelArt. If your tweet is selected, the “Strudel Düdeler” machine will doodle a corresponding picture on a strudel, and post the picture along with the tweet on the Facebook page.

I just checked the Facebook page, and it has a total of one Strudel Art from this past Wednesday. If Toaster Strudel really wants this campaign to work, there needs to be one post every morning. It’s important to stay consistent delivering what the campaign promises: a doodle on the strudel. If the posts are consistent, Toaster Strudel could be successful in building an online community. Conversation among the fans would begin and an online community would be created. When a company fails to follow through with plans, people move on to the next thing.

On Twitter, followers seem to be using #StrudelArt. Toaster Strudel needs to bring the hashtag to Facebook or just leave it as a Twitter-only trend. The company seems to be following through on Twitter but are failing on Facebook.

There is a lot of negative feedback on Facebook. People expressing how they find Hans Strudel (along with the entire commercial) annoying, how they believe the strudel to so unhealthy for kids, and how they want certain flavors brought back on the shelves. Does Hans Strudel even help the brand? They either need to tone down the use of the kid or do away with him. Toaster Strudel’s use of its Facebook page needs improvement big time. They don’t need to create social media accounts just because everyone else is. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work for the brand.

Also, so what if my tweet gets turned into a picture in icing on a strudel? What’s in it for me? Yeah, it’s fun for a company to recognize you personally, but how does that make me want to buy more Toaster Strudels? If I was still that kid obsessed with strudels, then this would definitely work for me, but I doubt there is an elementary school kid with both Twitter and Facebook.

Based on the comments, I think Toaster Strudel has some serious reanalyzing to do in order to reposition this pastry for its consumers. The social campaign does not seem to be working for the brand too well right now. They need to follow through with the campaign consistently posting and interacting with consumers via Facebook – not just Twitter – or they may just need to press the restart button.