Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Hires Social Media Manager - New Position at the Grocer

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has hired Nicole DeRuiter (pictured at top) as its corporate social media/public relations manager, a new position at the El Segundo, California-based fresh food and grocery chain.

DeRuiter will be responsible for the strategy, coordination and management of the 172-store chain's presence in social media, as well as coordinating social media use within the various departments at Fresh & Easy.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market currently uses a company blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and Flickr.com photo-sharing site as its primary corporate social media outlets.

The retailer's public relations and marketing staffs also conduct social media-based outreach campaigns to a group of foodie and mom-bloggers, regularly sending them free packages of store brand products, asking the bloggers to write about the items in their blogs and post about Fresh & Easy on their social media sites. 

Fresh & Easy also invites the bloggers to various food and wine-oriented special events, where it "wines and dines" the bloggers and social media-users, in the hope they'll help get the word out and create some word-of-mouth buzz about the grocery chain.

Prior to joining Fresh & Easy, Nicole Deruiter was an account executive a Matrixx Pictures.

Before that she was a manager of emerging media for online florist Teleflora and a senior account executive at marketing-public relations firm PCGCampbell.

In addition to her background in the public relations field, Deruiter has prior work experience in radio and television production.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's new social media maven is a graduate of the University of Southern California's Annenberg Program on Online Communities, a 12-month graduate program focused on web-based social/new media skills and program management at the university's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, where she earned a Masters of Communications Management degree. Ms. Deruiter has a bachelor's degree in broadcast and public relations from Central Michigan University.

To date, social media duties at Tesco's Fresh & Easy have primarily been a shared effort between the grocer's in-house marketing and public relations teams and one of its outside public relations agencies, APCO Worldwide.

Sallie Boorman, an account manager who works out of APCO's Sacramento, California office, has been a key player in helping Fresh & Easy establish and maintain its social media presence, particularly on Twitter and Facebook.

In 2009, Boorman also stepped in to help bring back to life Fresh & Easy's corporate blog, which was suffering from extreme infrequent posting neglect at the hands of its creator and at the time only poster, director of marketing Simon Uwings.

Today Boorman, Wonnacott and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market staffers Stephanie Patryla and Gary Turner each post semi-regularly on the company blog. [Read - March 29, 200: Things Are Improving Over at the Fresh & Easy Corporate Blog: Perhaps They've Been Listening to Us?; and February 17, 2009: Getting By (Much Better Now) 'With A Little Help From My Friends:' New Talent On Board the Fresh & Easy Corporate Marketing Blog One Year Hence.]

Before being hired as Fresh & Easy's public and governmental relations chief last year, Wonnacott worked for APCO Worldwide, where he was a manager. He's been Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's corporate spokesman since 2007. However, he did so as an APCO Worldwide employee, until the Tesco-owned grocer hired him last year.

Fresh & Easy began advertising for the social media/public relations manager position early this year. It's a part of the grocer's efforts to beef-up its in-house public and community relations team. That process began with the hiring of Wonnocott last year.

According to our sources, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market created the new social media-focused public relations manager position and has made the new hire, in large part because the grocer wants to better connect with customers and potential customers via cyberspace and its various online social communities.

For example, Fresh & Easy, taking a page from the marketing playbooks of popular grocers Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's, has beginning earlier this year increased its use of storytelling - telling stories about the makers of its private brand products, for example - as a way it hopes will help it to better build the overall Fresh & Easy brand.

As an example, Fresh & Easy has increased it's use of brief videos and other forms of storytelling as part of this strategy and practice, featuring the stories in the fortnightly online promotional missives it sends to members of its e-mail-based "friends of fresh & easy" group., along with in other communications venues. 

One of the missions of the new social media manager will be to use social media in an integrated way to help communicate these stories as part of the grocer's increased efforts to build the Fresh & Easy brand.

Reader Resource

[Readers: Fresh & Easy Buzz has written extensively about social media and grocers over the last three-plus years. For a selection of those stories, including many focused on United Kingdom-based Tesco and Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, click on the following links: grocers and social media,  Grocers on Twitter, social marketing, social media, Twitter,  Fresh and Easy on Twitter, Tesco on Twitter, Fresh and Easy corporate blog, Social networking sites, Facebook, Philip Clarke.]

Individuals, Society, Business, Grocery Retailing & More: 'Tweetminister,' 'Tweet Congress' and the Rise of 'Tweetocracy'

Since Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is a British creation (Tesco is based in the United Kingdom and has brought many of the ways of British food and grocery retailing with it across the pond in its operation of Fresh & Easy), and since -- as we've written about in a number of posts (see the links at the end of this piece) -- Fresh & Easy has a site on the social networking site Twitter.com (here), combined with the fact that Fresh & Easy Buzz has its own site on Twitter, we're going to make an editorial assumption and judgement that our readers might have some interest in two things -- the United Kingdom and the Twitter social networking site.

Now having made this assumption -- or as some might be want to suggest having merely attempted to find a Tesco Fresh & Easy and Twitter angle because we just want to share something we've recently became aware of with our readers -- we would like to introduce you to an interesting new Web site we recently discovered via a post in the Springwise newsletter.

The new Web site, 'Tweetminister," describes itself as "the place where real life and politics 'tweet.'" The Web site is a clearing house for members of British Parliament who "tweet," Twitter-talk for making real time posts about what they are doing, where they are, what they are reading, ect. on the micro-blogging, social networking site.

A potential problem: Twitter limits "tweets" to only 140 characters, which has us thinking it must be extremely difficult for the politicos to compose a "tweet." After all, if you've ever watched Britain's MP's in action in Parliament, you know brevity isn't something they regularly practice, as is the case with members of the U.S. Senate. But something tells us many of the PM's staffers are doing the "tweeting" for them.

We won't go on about the "Tweetminister" site. Rather, take a look at it here. It communicates all of the "twittering" MP's "tweets" in real time, which is an interesting feature.

Not to be outdone, Britain's Prime Minister's (Gordon Brown) office has its own site on Twitter, "10 Downing Street," here. Come to think of it -- "Tweet" actually sounds a bit British, but Twitter is based in San Francisco, California USA. [Note to the Obama White House: Why in the world isn't there a "White House" Twitter site yet. After all, social networking sites (including Twitter), which you folks used so well, played a huge part in the successful "Obama For President" campaign? Is Gordon Brown more social networking savvy than Barack Obama?]

The American side of the pond: 'Tweet Congress'

Now, speaking of those U.S. Senators we mentioned above -- did you really think we would leave the American angle out of this equation, that special U.S.-British relationship and all? --there's also a fairly new Web site called "Tweet Congress," where you can track what those members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate who "tweet" are "tweeting" about, and do so in real time, just like at "Tweetminister."

For example, as we write this, Republic Congressman from Southern California Dana Rohrabacher "tweets:" Just got out of Afghanistan; met old friends who worked with me in past battles against Soviet invaders and Taliban lunatics." Who would have know the Congressman was out of town, were it not for Twitter.

And Congressman John Boehner from Ohio, who also happens to be the Republican Majority Leader in the House, has recently posted about the Employee Free Choice Act legislation and its "Card Check" provision, legislation that likely will be debated in the House of Representatives later this year "tweets:" Support for 'card check' dips as public awareness grows@ http://tinyurl.com/desjv3 .

Yes, Republican House Leader Boehner opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and "Card Check." [Read a recent piece we wrote about the Employee Free Choice Act, "Card Check" and organized labor and the food and grocery retailing industry at this link: Labor & Food Retailing: Kroger Co. Chains Sign New Contract With the UFCW Union in Vegas; What Happened to the UFCW Tesco Fresh & Easy Campaign? ]

You can explore "Tweet Congress" and all it has to offer here.

If nothing else comes of it, creating the "tweets" for the members of the U.S. Congress will be much more enjoyable for the scores of college-university student interns who work in the Capital Hill, Washington, D.C. offices, usually without pay, of every member of the House and Senate each year, compared to the normal, mundane tasks of opening mail and answering phones usually given them. And of course, we bet those members of Congress who have created some of their own "tweets" rather than delegating completely to staffers and interns are, like most Twitter users, hooked on "tweeting."

E. Pluribus Twitterdom: Grocers, politicians, citizens and all

At the end of this post (below "Reader Resource") we include links to a few of the recent pieces we've written and posted about the micro-blogging, social networking site Twitter.com. In those posts we've discussed, among other things, how Twitter is a template in which different users -- individuals, businesses (including grocers), governments, non-profit groups and others -- can adapt the site to their specific needs and uses.

If you spend some time going through Twitter, you will discover this fact in no time flat. People from all walks of life use the site. Businesses ranging from convenience store chain 7-Eleven (and Tesco's Fresh & Easy), to mom and pop dry cleaners, are using Twitter. Newspapers, magazines, blogs (like Fresh & Easy Buzz) are one of the fastest-growing user segments of the micro-blogging social networking site. Add to that non-profit groups, community and neighborhood organizations and more. And individuals are the biggest users of Twitter.

This is the template aspect of Twitter -- all kinds of users, using the site in different ways. It seems like each week we discover people using Twitter in new and different ways. It's a template in which an ever-evolving combination of existing and new users are creating unique ways to adapt the site to what they desire. And among the fastest-growing user segments of Twitter is business, which is using the site as both an informational-communications space as well as for marketing purposes.

As the two sites, "Tweetminister" and "Tweet Congress," demonstrate, Twitter also is a force for greater citizen participation in government. Who would have thought just a couple years ago that British PM's and U.S. Members of Congress would be letting their constituents know in real time what they are up to, and what their thoughts are? And in times like the present, with the global recession and financial-credit crisis, citizens need to know more than ever what their representatives are up to. Increasingly you can ask them via a "tweet," as long as you use Twitter.com. Of course, some might say it's all TMI -- too much information.

We call this new phenomenon -- the direct communication between legislators and citizens via Twitter -- "Tweetocracy." And thus we suggest the U.S. and the UK are on the road to becoming "Tweetocracies." We also use "Tweetocracy" in the larger sense, as suggested in the post title, for how Twitter is democratizing numerous aspects of life, including business, politics and more. Remember you read those two terms here first. (And, if you have seen the terms used used in print before, do let us know. We couldn't find any such usage of "Tweetocracy" in our search to see if the term has been coined yet.)

Reader Resource:

A selection of recent, related posts from Fresh & Easy Buzz:

>January 25, 2009: Twitter Me This Batman: Are You Using Twitter? If Not, You Probably Should Be

>January 19, 2009: Sweet Tweets: Popular laist.com Web Site Picks Up Fresh & Easy Buzz's Buzz On Tesco's Fresh & Easy and Twitter.com; Adds A Little Buzz of its Own

>January 18, 2009: The UK Telegraph Reports on Tesco Fresh & Easy's Use of Twitter.Com; Since Fresh & Easy Buzz Was First to Report it, We Offer Some Added Value

>January 26, 2008: When Social Media Goes Bad - Maybe? Tesco and Waitrose Store Workers in the UK Use Facebook Sites to 'Diss' Store Customers

>February 4, 2008: Social Media and Sense of Place: Phoenix, Arizona Fresh & Easy Market Site on Brightkite.com; 'Kissmecait' Does Some Retail Anthropology & Geography

Getting By (Much Better Now) 'With A Little Help From My Friends:' New Talent On Board the Fresh & Easy Corporate Marketing Blog One Year Hence

In 2008, Fresh & Easy Buzz wrote and published a number of posts about Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's corporate marketing Blog, published by the retailer's marketing chief, Simon Uwins, and how the Blog would go for weeks, and even months, without being updated with new content-posts, along with the fact that seldom if ever reader-customer comments on the Blog were addressed and answered.

We likened the situation to a retail store -- of which a corporate marketing Blog is an extension of in the case of a retailer that uses one for such purposes -- that is neglected, seldom updated in content and merchandising, and where customers' (that's what the Blog's readers are, along with others being potential customers) questions are seldom answered. A corporate marketing-oriented Blog is an extension -- a digital store-front minus actually selling groceries -- of a grocery chain's brick-and-mortar stores. Plus, marketing and customer service is "everything" a retailer does, from how store employees dress to its Web sites and Blogs.

It's our analysis and opinion that when a grocery chain or any other type of retailer uses a company Blog for marketing purposes it then needs to keep the content (regular posts say at least once a week at a minimum) of that Blog fresh, just like it must keep merchandise in a brick-and-mortar grocery store fresh.

And just like store employees are required to (and want to) answer customer questions and inquiries, so to should whomever is responsible for publishing a company marketing Blog do the same. It's just basic and good customer service.

We also think retailer company Blogs should offer customers and potential customers important information about the retailer and its stores, as well as marketing-focused information. Done well, both general and marketing-oriented communications can be achieved, often times in the same post.

Whole Foods Market, Inc. does this well with its "Whole Story" Blog. Wal-Mart does it in an interesting and informative way as well with its Web site-based "Buyers Blog," as does San Francisco Bay Area (Northern California) multi-store independent Andronico's Market, with its "Buyers Blog," to offer three grocer-retailer examples we think are worth taking a look at.

Below are links to the posts we made about the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market corporate marketing Blog topic and issue in 2008:

[January 21, 2008: Click! Click!: Who's Minding the Fresh & Easy Corporate Blog?... February 14, 2008: It Looks Like Somebody is Minding the Fresh & Easy Corporate Blog A Bit Better of Late... March 29, 2008: Things Are Improving Over at the Fresh & Easy Corporate Blog: Perhaps They've Been Listening to Us?.]

As you can see by the post titles above, after publishing our January 21, 2008 piece, in which we identified and pointed out the problem, there was some improvement at the Fresh & Easy corporate marketing Blog, an improvement we attempted to reinforce in a positive manner (Fair & Balanced as one cable news network likes to say) with two posts -- one in February and another in March.

But... things went downhill over at the Fresh & Easy corporate marketing Blog once again soon after -- actually well before October, but we waited, just to be fair, as the posts linked below describe:

[October 13, 2008: 'The Promotional Pundit': Tesco Fresh & Easy Launches New $6-off Online Coupon Today; Post on Corp. Marketing Blog Remains -- Adding Insult to Injury... October 12, 2008: 'The Promotional Pundit:' More On the Online Coupon Fiasco: Tesco Fresh & Easy's Marketing Department to Launch A New Online Coupon Early Next Week... October 10, 2008: 'The Promotional Pundit': Keeping the Marketing and Promotional Eye On the Ball; Fixing A Promotional Fiasco Fresh & Easy Isn't Even Aware Of.]

Things got even worse over at the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market corporate marketing Blog in the fall of 2008, when not one single new post was made from September, 2008 -to- the end of the year. Fresh & Easy Buzz was well aware of the once again neglected digital store-front but (that Fair & Balanced mantra again) decided to hold off, thinking perhaps the busy holiday season was the reason, therefore giving benefit to the doubt.

We were considering writing another piece about the topic when not a single new sentence, nor even a single word, was posted as 2008 neared its end in December. Even worse, numerous reader-customer comments in the form of questions on the last posts went unanswered, as they do to this day from those past posts.

We then learned that Mr. Uwins was out during most of that period on paternity leave -- the proud new father of twins. Congratulations on that wonderful event to him.

We learned this fact though -- and its explanation as to why there had been zero posting activity on the company Blog -- not from the Blog -- which one could reasonably expect (or if not, just a single sentence in the Blog saying: "There won't be any new posts in the Fresh & Easy marketing Blog until January, 2009) -- but rather from a response by SallieB (who works for Fresh & Easy's public relations firm) on the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Twitter.com site she established and maintains in an excellent manner for the grocery and fresh foods chain.

Her "tweet" (Twitter-talk for a post) was in response to a question ("tweet") from a Fresh & Easy customer, Blogger and Twitter-user named Frankie, who was asking why there hadn't been a post on the Fresh & Easy company Blog since September. She had also left the same question on the company Blog but it was never responded to. There were a couple of additional consumer questions on the last (September, 2008) post on the Fresh & Easy corporate marketing Blog, in addition to hers, asking this same question, by the way -- question-comments that went unanswered.

Therefore, we decided to not write about the over three month lack of Blog activity at the Fresh & Easy corporate marketing Blog (digital store-front) for a bit, waiting to see if something might appear in 2009. (The benefit-of-the-doubt mantra again.)

And eventually it did. On January 2, 2009, Mr. Uwins wrote the post reprinted below (in italics) titled: "new year resolutions from fresh & easy." Of particular note are paragraphs number 9 and 10:

Friday, January 2, 2009
new year resolutions from fresh & easy

"Well, what an extraordinary year.

With all that's happened in the world, it's easy to forget that fresh&easy only had its first birthday in November.

From the start, it's been a business built by simply listening to what customers ideally want, and then trying to deliver it.

So in that spirit, I thought I'd share 3 resolutions for the new year.

We all know about the state of the economy. In talking to a lot of our customers, we hear about the various measures they're taking to cut down on their spending and reduce waste, in order to stretch their budgets. But we're also hearing the same concerns that we heard before, about the wholesomeness of food and the impact on the environment, though with a real sense of having to compromise to make ends meet.

So our first resolution is to find new ways to help our customers to stretch their budgets, so they don't have to compromise - from tomorrow, for example, we will always have 6 produce packs on offer at just 98¢ per pack, week in, week out, so our customers can count on it."

We've also had many, many requests to be kept informed via email of what's going on at our stores - whether offers, new products, meal ideas, etc.

So our second resolution is to do just that - you can now sign up on our website to be a friend of fresh&easy, receiving latest news and offers from us via email. It's quite basic at the moment, but we'll add features as we go (on the basis of feedback from our friends, naturally).

Finally, I've also had many requests to keep this blog going, and make it a bit more interactive - I'm very conscious that my last posting was in September (I had twin girls that month, which has kept me rather busy...).

So my third resolution, to uprate this blog. To help me, I've co-opted 2 web assistants, Gary and Sallie, who'll add things now and then, and follow up on comments. They'll always though use their own names, when they do.

It's been an amazing year to be a part of fresh&easy, as we've built a brand from nothing.Who knows what 2009 will bring. But we'll just keep listening to customers, and trying to give them what they want.And that, surely, is how it should be.

If you read our January, 2008, February, 2008 and March, 2008 posts on the topic and issue that we linked above (eighth paragraph from the top of this page), you will see we offered as one simple solution to the problem being for Mr. Uwins to merely have one or more of the Fresh & Easy Buzz marketing and/or PR firm staff personal assist him with posting and responding to reader-customer comments on the Fresh & Easy corporate marketing Blog -- assisting with the operations of the digital store-front just as team members assist one another in the Fresh & Easy brick-and-mortar grocery stores.

Such teamwork also has the added benefit of getting fresh thinking from others. It's also plain old good delegation. We also suggested -- and still do -- that some of the Fresh & Easy category managers and buyers be invited to post on the Blog. After all, too many marketers on one Blog tends to sound like...well, too many marketers. Other voices add variety. How about a store manager (or employee) or two as well?

It took a full year, but it appears marketing chief Uwins agreed with our suggestion. And since we believe course-correction to be a good thing, we applaud the decision. Better late than never, right?

SallieB and Gary, a company marketing staffer, are now posting on the Fresh & Easy marketing Blog, as well as answering some of the reader questions left via the comment box. As mentioned, SallieB does an excellent job with the Twitter site, and it appears Gary has been posting on the company's Twitter site as well. Both have added to the Fresh & Easy corporate marketing Blog, particularly the simple fact that the posting is now more frequent. It could be a little more frequent however. A minimum of at least once a week seems reasonable to us.

Having SallieB and Gary posting on the company Blog also has an added benefit for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market: both are or very close to the age demographic (about 18-35) which we've identified to thus far be the most enthusiastic about the Fresh & Easy small-format, convenience-oriented grocery and fresh foods store and retail offering. Combining the use of the Blog with social networking tools like Twitter is something both of them seem well versed in and comfortable with.

Fresh & Easy Marketing chief Simon Uwins has often mentioned his affection for the British band Radio Head, which was born in Oxford, England, in the corporate marketing Blog. But it appears that about one year since we first suggested it, Mr. Uwins has listened to the musical advice of another British rock legend, Joe Cocker, he born and raised in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, and asked for a little help from his friends with the company Blog. As Mr. Cocker sings:

What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

[Click here for all of the lyrics, and a cell phone ringtone as well.]

We look forward to watching how the Fresh & Easy corporate marketing Blog progresses now that the two new associates have joined the team. Of course, some might suggest that now with a team of three, particularly since the two new Bloggers are extremely talented from our observations, that the bar has now automatically been set much higher. We will let Fresh & Easy Buzz readers know if we think that bar has been met -- or even exceeded -- down the road a bit. [Hint: We like that SallieB and Gary have been posting at least one a week since January. That frequency sounds familiar.]

Waiting a year to bring in some help with the Blog was about 11 months too long though. We've heard from a number of the company Blog readers who didn't ever get their post questions answered, nearly all of them were Fresh & Easy store customers. Most were not very pleased.

Those we heard from also said they stopped shopping at the stores. We only heard from about six such people -- but that's six too many for a grocer to alienate when doing so can be easily avoided. And if six did send us comments, comments we didn't ask for, we can imagine there are more than six that felt they received negative customer service by not having their questions addressed on the corporate marketing Blog. And as all marketers know, word-of-mouth can be the best -- and the worse if negative -- form of marketing. It's a powerful sword that can cut both ways.

Course correction is good among retailers and marketers. We applaud it. But waiting unnecessarily too long to course correct when there's no need to do so can cause damage to a brand, not to mention contributing to a loss of customers. We suggest it did so at Fresh & Easy.

After all, there's never anything wrong with asking for a little help from one's friends -- in real time though. And can't you almost feel the sigh of relief when reading Mr. Uwins' January 2, 2009 Blog post about getting a little help with the corporate marketing Blog from his friends-associates?

Reader Resource:

[The Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market corporate marketing Blog is here.]

[A couple past posts from Fresh & Easy Buzz about the Fresh & Easy company Blog but not directly related to the topic addressed in our post: April 6, 2008: Telegraph.uk.com: 'Tesco USA Slip Highlights the Perils of Corporate Blogging;' We Couldn't Disagree More With This Piece April 18, 2008: Fresh & Easy Marketing Director Talks About the 'Self-Service' Checkout Policy at the Stores in the F&E Company Blog.]

[Twitter.com: You can follow Fresh & Easy Buzz on Twitter here.]

Social Media and Sense of Place: Phoenix, Arizona Fresh & Easy Market Site on Brightkite.com; 'Kissmecait' Does Some Retail Anthropology & Geography

A photograph of a pink-labeled wine brand called "Bitch," taken recently at the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store at 3131 East Greenway Road in Phoenix, Arizona, by Brighkite.com user Kissmecait. Kissmecait has a great eye for unique brands, as well as for photography.

Grocers and social media-networking sites

The Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store at 3131 East Greenway Road in Phoenix, Arizona has set up a site (or one has been set up for the store by someone else) on the social networking site Brightkite.com.

Brightkite.com is a place-centered social media and networking site similar to the Twitter.com micro-Blogging site, except Brightkite.com includes photographs taken by users with their cell phone cameras, Apple i-phones or digital cameras. The Brightkite.com social networking concept is, similar to Twitter.com, that users leave messages about where they are and what they are doing -- but include a photograph related to what they are doing at any given time. In fact, the photograph is the primary focus (or media element) of Brightkite.

Like Twitter, Brightkite.com can also be used as a social networking and media marketing tool by businesses, the media and other organizations, also something that Twitter.com is being used for, in order to publicize what they offer and to communicate with consumers, in Brightkite's case more from a photographic perspective rather than with words like is the case on the micro-blogging Twitter social networking site.

There are currently three photographs posted on the Fresh & Easy 3131 East Greenway Road store Brightkite.com site. All three of the photos, taken at the Greenway Road Fresh & Easy market, are by a Brightkite.com user named kissmecait. And, we might add, all three of the pictures are interesting and of very high quality.

You can view the Fresh & Easy 3131 East Greenway Road, Phoenix, Arizona Brightkite.com site here, where kissmecait's three photos from the store are posted. That's cait's photograph of the pink-labeled "Bitch Wine" from the Fresh & Easy market at the top of this story, by the way. You can view it and the other two photographs at the link above as well.

Additionally, you can view kissmecait's Brightkite.com home site here, where in addition to the photographs from the Phoenix Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store she has others posted from her ventures out and about the Phoenix, Arizona Metro region.

Cait also has her own Blog, which is linked at the Brightkite.com site we've linked for you above. This is a link to her kissmecait Blog "about me" section. Here is a link to her kissmecait Blog homepage.

For those readers who've yet to view the Phoenix Fresh & Easy store site and the photographs with captions kissmecait has posted there linked above, besides the the pink-labeled "Bitch Wine" photograph pictured at the top of our piece, she includes a picture of a fresh cup of coffee from the store, with this caption: "kissmecait: Press coffee is so damn good. @ Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market (3131 E Greenway Rd, Phoenix, AZ) - 3 days ago; and a photograph of a purple colored package of fresh & easy store brand fresh seedless red grapes that includes this caption: "kissmecait: Proff that grapes are RED and that purple IS a flavor!! @ Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market (3131 E Greenway Rd, Phoenix, AZ) - 7 days ago.

We like kissmecait's photos and her captions. Very creative.

Brightkite.com as retail anthropology & geography of place

In a sense the place-centered store pictures and captions taken in the Phoenix Fresh & Easy market and posted on Brightkite.com serve as sort of a grocery store anthropology and geography in that they capture aspects of the place (the Fresh & Easy store), time (when the given photograph was taken and comment written) and the contents of the store (the products photographed and described). Perhaps thousands of years from now future civilizations and societies will study them as a way to try and understand food and grocery retailing in the 21rst century?

It also is interesting to Fresh & Easy Buzz in that the photographs and comments capture what in the store interests a specific consumer or shopper, in this instance kissmecait. She obviously loves to buy and drink the Press Coffee, for example. And her sense of fun and humor likely is what motivated her to capture the bottles of "Bitch" brand wine with her camera? And perhaps her sense of irony is what made her decide to photograph the red grapes in a purple container and caption the picture as she did?

We shall observe with keen interest additional photographs and captions on the Fresh & Easy 3131 East Greenway Road Brightkite site. In fact, we can't wait to see what kissmecait decides to explore and photograph on her next trip to the store. Great retail anthropology and geography kissmecait.

Reader Resource:

Linkage - recent posts from Fresh & Easy Buzz about grocers and social media-networking:

>January 26, 2009: When Social Media Goes Bad - Maybe? Tesco and Waitrose Store Workers in the UK Use Facebook Sites to 'Diss' Store Customers

>January 25, 2009: Twitter Me This Batman: Are You Using Twitter? If Not, You Probably Should Be

>January 19, 2009: Sweet Tweets: Popular laist.com Web Site Picks Up Fresh & Easy Buzz's Buzz On Tesco's Fresh & Easy and Twitter.com; Adds A Little Buzz of its Own

>January 18, 2009: The UK Telegraph Reports on Tesco Fresh & Easy's Use of Twitter.Com; Since Fresh & Easy Buzz Was First to Report it, We Offer Some Added Value

Reader Note:

Follow Fresh & Easy Buzz on Twitter.com at: www.twitter.com/freshneasybuzz.