The book, Mr Tayto: The Man Inside the Jacket, which has reached number one in the Irish book charts* (outselling the memoirs of former Taoisech, Bertie Ahern and the Manchester United 2009 annual) has had voluminous support online via twitter, facebook and through Mr Tayto’s own website.

The campaign was launched in mid November with Yomego commissioned to design and build Mr. Tayto’s website www.mrtayto.ie and put in place the social media channels to galvanise the crisp brand’s international fan-base and drive sales.

Yomego’s social media optimisation campaign is currently taking Mr. Tayto onto flikr, facebook, twitter, YouTube and bebo. It also involves contacting notable bloggers, forum members and relevant online media contacts to seed prizes, interviews and snippets not in the book.

Two weeks into the campaign and Mr Tayto has over 11,000 fans on facebook and legions of the Tayto army have visited the campaign website which includes a twitter-style app that tracks Mr. Tayto on his book-signing tour and personal appearances around Ireland.

Steve Richards, managing director of social media agency Yomego, said:

“We couldn’t be more pleased with the impact of the social media campaign to date. Mr. Tayto crisps are loved by every Irishman around the world and with the nature of social media being what it is the campaign around the book launch is giving them all a reason to come together within one online community.

“In light of the fact that Mr. Tayto stood for election to the Irish government some years ago, there is also a nice footnote to the whole campaign that he should now be outselling a former Taoisech in the book charts.”

He added:

“Brands can no longer ignore, or pay lip-service to, social media audiences. But branded content needs to be engaging and delivered to consumers in an appropriate, non-intrusive way. The success of the Mr Tayto campaign illustrates what is possible.”