The Viking Life: Taking The Brand Beyond The Kitchen

The Viking Life: Taking The Brand Beyond The Kitchen.
Senior Account Executive Ellen Carr meets a new friend while hosting a Viking Life Culinary Trip to Thailand.
Senior Account Executive Ellen Carr meets a new friend while hosting a Viking Life Culinary Trip to Thailand.

Over a decade ago, The Ramey Agency was tapped to help Viking Range Corporation enhance the Viking brand by developing and promoting a lifestyle brand extension called The Viking Life. Through The Viking Life we were able to cultivate a more meaningful relationship with consumers by offering them enriching content and experiences, giving them a taste of the Viking life and adding value to their ownership experience.

One of the main components of The Viking Life was a partnership with The Culinary Institute of America and the exclusive Worlds of Flavor Travel Program. This Viking-branded travel program provided the authenticity of a unique culinary travel experience that no other appliance manufacturer could offer. Trips spanned from exotic locales such as India and Thailand to favorite classics such as Italy and France, and were led by renowned chefs and esteemed food writers. These exclusive trips allowed culinary enthusiasts to completely immerse themselves in the culinary destination of their choice and indulge in all that their chosen region had to offer. Viking travelers learned the history, traditional techniques and authentic flavors of the area, and even had access to local markets and local chefs.

At the time, Viking was the only one in the industry offering the breadth and depth of this type of lifestyle experience: Consumers could visit the Italian countryside and make fresh pasta with locals via the Viking Worlds of Flavor travel program, take an Italian cooking class at the Viking Cooking School in a city near them or find an Italian recipe on their computer at home and match it with a great Italian wine recommended on thevikinglife.com.

The Viking Life allowed us to build a dialogue and relationship directly with Viking owners, learn more about them and build a community with other like-minded people. It also brought the Viking brand to life and allowed consumers to join Viking instead of just purchasing Viking. Because of this, we were able to create an array of consumer touchpoints to cross-promote major and minor appliances, product features, cooking tools and Viking Cooking School classes. It provided the opportunity for us to create true brand advocates – consumers who enjoyed their Viking in deeper, richer ways – and allowed us to add value to the overall Viking ownership experience.

Ellen Carr, Senior Account Executive at The Ramey Agencybio_ecarr_tn