Why Whole Foods Is Using an Instagram-Like B2B App

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How do you like them apples?

Image: Whole Foods

By Todd Wasserman2014-06-03 04:03:02 UTC

Is there a market for a B2B version of Instagram?

Apparently, there is. FoKo, a 1-year-old photo-sharing app for businesses has snagged Whole Foods as a client. The supermarket chain began using FoKo earlier this year. Within 90 days, 1,000 employees in 12 regions were using it. The company hopes to glean insights from the photos that it can apply company-wide. For instance, if a local Whole Foods outlet has an interesting display, the company can use FoKo to replicate it somewhere else. When a new store opens, the chain can also document and share its unique details.

See also: What Marketers Can Learn From Whole Foods' Organic Approach to Pinterest

The supermarket chain had experimented with Instagram, but found the public nature of the platform didn't meet its business goals. “Our social-media team recognized that as convenient as Instagram was for our employees to use, sharing our visual ideas publicly wasn’t the right way to go,” said Ryan Amirault, senior social-media program manager for Whole Foods Market, said in a blog post. “We were looking for a way that we could have our employees collaborating with simplicity, but without revealing competitive secrets. In the competitive supermarket industry, things like new merchandising ideas can give you an edge.”

Eric Sauve, co-founder and CEO of FoKo, declined to say what Whole Foods is paying — if anything — to use the app. FoKo offers a freemium model that charges for extra features, such as notifications about inappropriate photos. Sauve did not reveal specifics of the pricing.

The hope is that FoKo will bring photo-sharing into the workplace. "Hardly anyone takes pics at work," he said. "We wanted to take this and try to make this as prevalent in people's professional lives as it is in their private lives."

A sign at Whole Foods' 2014 'Tribal Gathering' company-wide internal conference, encouraging the use of FoKo.

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Topics: Business, Marketing, Startups