Vorwerk UK and Vorwerk International have recently changed their social media policy, which means for socials such as Facebook and Instagram, I am no longer able to use the name Thermomix or any abbreviation of Thermomix, such as Thermie within my business name.
This has had a huge impact on the workforce on the ground, who like me have been running their Independent Thermomix. Some of my best friends in the business have been Thermomix Advisors for years with names like ThermieChef to LivingwithmyThermie or Thermbalina. All these will have to be changed in the next few months.
After much deliberation that I have finally worked up the name, “One Girl in the Mix” for both my Facebook and Instagram accounts. It was a resounding yes from all of you that I needed to keep the One Girl in my name, so it was either One Girl and her Journey (detailing my journey with Thermomix…and if you say it fast enough, it sounds like Thermie) or One Girl in the Mix, which is what my Instagram followers voted for. I never thought I’ve ever say that sentence. I have followers; I have a tribe. Yay!
I’ve managed to get a quick redesign of the logo, so you can now see a little icon that now bridges the two brand names. Yes, it is a picture of me in a Thermoix. Smiling back at you.
This domain will remain unchanged, as will my contact details and other accounts – does anyone even know that I have a YouTube channel? Probably a good thing. But given what’s happening in the world right now (read Coronavirus) I do have plans to revive my YouTube and go live (argh…) to get us through things.
Despite really liking my new social name, it is a huge blow to my business as the name ‘One Girl and her Thermie‘ has been around for longer than most of the staff who make these decisions have worked at Vorwerk UK. It will mean I have to build up the hashtags (#onegirlinthemix) and the audience to get the rankings for the business, which leads many of you to this page.
I’ve been demonstrating Thermomix for more than 10 years now, so in those times have seen the business change from a family run company and Thermomix as a distributor owned by John & Janie Turner to having 3 different Sales Directors under Vorwerk UK as a fully-owned subsidiary of Vorwerk International. With these transitions, we’ve also had countless Marketing hats. But I am a fan of change, given my marketing expertise (I am Chartered Institute of Marketing qualified), I welcome to see what the new marketing guy has up his sleeve. He certainly has the experience having worked for Tupperware before so hopefully has a grasp of dealing with distributors and business partners with a sales force of over 40,000. Let’s hope with having worked with a much larger remote workforce, he’ll have the energy and the patience to grow our Thermomix in the UK, raising consumer brand awareness through recruitment.
I go back to my marketing training. Bruce Tuckman, an educational psychologist, identified a five-stage development process that most teams follow to become high performing. He called the stages: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Team progress through the stages is shown in the following diagram.
Let’s hope the storming stage which this hiccup in the social media strategy has had will be on the upward curve soon, so we can get back to the performing stage.
So whichever social you follow, please do leave a comment. Or when you are cooking and posting yourself, hashtag me so I can see what you’ve been making. All of this will help the algorithms do their thing.
Stay well and keep cooking up a storm, Ankita
