“Leave Room for Risk”
Michelle St. Jacques, Head of US Brand & R&D, at Kraft Heinz; Magen Hanrahan, VP Media, and Marketing Services, Kraft Heinz; Moderator: Catherine Roe, Senior Direct Client Relationships, Oracle Data Cloud
CR: How can the long-term effort of brand building drive short-term sales?
Michelle: We have a 100-plus year-old brands. We believe the only way they’ll stay longstanding is if we continue to drive that relevance.
Three different examples of ways to make sure we stay at the top of brands and food:
1. We found out people were being fined for having lemonade stands.
Kraft Heinz pledged to pay fines and legal fees for kids trying to sell CountryTime lemonade. Related ads featured “Legal-ade” a legal defense fund to fight the fines, generating more than 1 billion in impressions. More than 225 news segments. That’s a lot of earned media. Almost 100% positive sentiment. Great way to show action, not just advertising.”
2. Constantly hack culture.
Example: Campaign based on Mad Men iconic episode in which Don Draper presented a pitch for Heinz: “Please pass the Heinz” which the company turned down. “We said, ‘let’s try to be the first brand that recreates something from this TV program.” It was a great moment that Heinz could be part of the culture.” Total cost $200K, but generated $55 million-plus in earned media.
3. We constantly test what is the right product portfolio to deliver against different consumer needs. Example: For Kraft Mac n Cheese there were consumer concerns about artificial dyes. We felt we should replace the dyes with natural dyes, but people freaked out about what would happen to the taste. So we had a silent launch, the world’s largest taste test. We showed we’re committed to delivering the same taste and iconic color without artificial dyes.
Editor’s Note: From Advertising Week, Oracle Interviewing Kraft Heinz