For more than a decade, children have enjoyed the famous Goldfish crackers from Pepperidge Farm (smiling Goldfish crackers were launched by Schneider Associates many years ago) Now, Pepperidge Farm is leveraging their smiling Goldfish equity by launching Goldfish Sandwich Bread- the bread that smiles back.
The bread comes in three varieties: Soft White, Soft 100% Whole Wheat, and Soft Honey Whole Wheat. All three contain no high fructose corn syrup and boast 3 grams of fiber per serving for only 120 calories. Not to mention, the bread is completely crust-free, ensuring that the pickiest eaters will have no reason to dislike it.
“We are excited to offer kids and the young at heart a fun and healthful new way to enjoy their favorite sandwiches,” Maureen Linder, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Fresh and Frozen Bakery at Pepperidge Farm said in a press release from the company.
To celebrate the launch, Pepperidge Farms conducted a national survey to unveil the hidden troubles of making lunches. In “The Shape of Sandwiches” survey, they found that parents often find making lunches difficult and even frustrating. Nine out of 10 moms revealed that their children find their sandwiches more appealing if the bread is cut into fun and creative shapes and sizes, and are more likely to eat them. 50% of mothers participating in the survey revealed that their children have requested triangular sandwiches while 23% revealed that their children have wanted their food in shapes of faces. Pepperidge farm created a product based on a unique consumer insight, fitting into the recent trend of Customer Calibration™ that we have been seeing.
Aside from the survey, Pepperidge Farms also participated in Evo ’11, a three-day social media conference for women in Park City, Utah, to showcase their new bread. They provided lunch for the conference on Friday, July 8th, where the new sandwich bread was a featured product. A photo op included a scenic picnic backdrop and a blow-up replica of the Goldfish mascot, Finn. Participant pictures were all uploaded onto the official Pepperidge Farms Facebook page.
So far, the reviews for Goldfish Sandwich Bread have been positive, which is no surprise considering the brand developed the product based on consumer insights. Is it the best thing since sliced bread? Could be.
A product launch that we’re watching: Orville Redenbacher’s New Microwave Popcorn Pop Up Bowl. By using innovative marketing strategies and creating a solution to a common snack-time problem, this product is a possible entry for this year’s Most Memorable New Product Launch.
Microwave popcorn lovers everywhere are familiar with the icky buttery hands that result from reaching into the bottom of a microwave popcorn bag. Orville Redenbacher has launched an innovative packaging solution to produce a clean and enjoyable popcorn eating experience: the Pop Up Bowl, now available at Walmart. “This is the biggest thing to happen to popcorn in 25 years,” says Jesse Spungin, general manager at Orville Redenbacher. The new packaging, available in Ultimate Butter, Smart Pop, Movie Theater Butter and Butter, makes sharing a popcorn bag easy without the hassle of rinsing out a bowl when you’re done. So what’s all the buzz about? The bag transforms into a bowl while in the microwave, so the only clean up required is tossing the empty bowl. In a society that relies on convenience and efficiency, a clean, fun and user-friendly package is the perfect improvement to everyone’s favorite snack.
The new packaging was launched towards the beginning of Orville Redenbacher’s Pop & Win Instant Win Game. Specially marked boxes of popcorn contain popcorn bags with heat activated game messages that announce whether or not the bag is a winner. Winning bags contain a code to be entered online to redeem prizes that range from HDTVs and Wii consoles to games and digital cameras to grand prizes like a $10,000 Game Room Bundle or a $10,000 Home Theater Makeover.
Before the Pop Up Bowl launch in February, bloggers and Blissdom 2011 social media conference attendees were sent samples of the product to generate internet buzz. A large portion of the reviewers are moms who shared the popcorn bowl with their families. The FoodYouLove Youtube channel features a video demonstrating the convenience of the Pop Up Bowl as opposed to traditional bags of popcorn. A SmartSource $1 off printable coupon is circulating online, and The Orville Redenbacher Facebook page is also marketing the new product, emphasizing the easy cleanup and share-ability of the packaging.
So far, reviewers are raving about the Pop Up Bowl. It has already been featured on The View’s blog as one of this year’s hottest food trends. With a no mess, easy to use package and faster preparation time, it’s a wonder this hasn’t been thought of before. The Pop Up Bowl is sure to be a revolutionary product that pushes the snack food industry to reconsider packaging as vital to product differentiation. Environmentalists will approve of the waste saved from using napkins. Clean, convenient, easy to eat – what’s not to love?
Patrick Richardson, Director of Integrated Marketing at Schneider Associates, presents the Motorola Droid. With an innovative launch and advertising campaign, is this smart phone memorable enough to take the top spot? Check back soon and find out!
With intense competition in the category, fast food restaurants are going beyond just the “burger and fries” menu to offer more diverse and healthy options. Quick-service restaurants expert, Elissa Elan of Nation’s Restaurant News, has been following these new food trends and offers her nominations* for the most memorable fast food innovations of the year (product choices by Elissa, summaries compiled by the MMNPL staff).
This summer, McDonald’s vowed to “change the way you look at fruit” with its new Real Fruit Smoothies. Offered in Wild Berry and Strawberry Banana flavors, these new McCafe blends are creamy and cool, creating an entirely new fruit experience. The introduction of the sweet new smoothies and their partner, the Frappe, resulted in a jump in sales for the fast food giant, while solidifying the smoothie’s place in the restaurant world.
In April, Subway joined the fast food breakfast trend with a new line of breakfast sandwiches. Served on a wheat English muffin, with black forest ham, green peppers, onions and melted cheese, the Western Egg & Cheese is a breakfast delight for less than 200 calories. Customers can mix it up with bread choices such as flatbread or French bread, and can customize their breakfasts with all the fixings Subway’s sandwich bar has to offer. With Subway restaurants now opening at 7am on weekday mornings, this sandwich king has quickly become a major player in the breakfast game.
Burger King stayed true to its name this year, with the introduction of the huge seven-ounce Steakhouse XT burger. Launched in February, the Steakhouse XT is a thick burger topped with lettuce, tomato, ketchup and mayo, with options such as cheese, bacon and crispy onions. The unique attraction of the Steakhouse XT is not, however, it’s massive size and delicious taste, but the way the burger is grilled. Burger King’s new Flex Broiler has serious grilling skills, while saving energy and reducing gas emissions, making this tasty burger environmentally friendly.
This summer, Wendy’s revived their salad line with the return of the Garden Sensations Salads, first introduced in 2002. The salad line includes: Apple Pecan Chicken, Baja, Spicy Chicken Caesar and BLT Cobb salads. All are hand-made daily by Wendy’s, with fresh ingredients not often found in fast-food restaurants. Seasonal fruit, fresh greens, hand-made pico de gallo and crispy bacon make these salads a delicious alternativeto the fast-food burger. All four salads weigh in at less than 800 calories, offering customers a healthy, high-quality and delicious menu option.
Introduced in May 2010, Popeyes’ new Wicked Chicken is a fun and flavorful way of offering boneless chicken. Marinated with authentic Louisiana seasonings, hand-battered and breaded in the restaurants, Wicked Chicken is wickedly good. Served crispy, twisty and curly, these thin chicken strips are delicious, affordable and perfect for dipping.
*Not all products chosen by the MMNPL expert panelists are guaranteed to be included in the MMNPL survey due to our rigorous criteria for selecting new products.
For more information on Elissa Elan, please visit out expert panel page. For more information on upcoming MMNPL products, see our Twitter handle, @MMNPL.
Will McDonald’s Real Fruit Smoothies resonate with health conscious consumers? McDonald’s is certainly no stranger to memorable product launches, having made the Most Memorable New Product Launch survey’s Top 10 multiple times since 2002, most recently at #2 in 2009 with the McCafé line. So will the Real Fruit Smoothie swirl up interest and product trial, or just blend in with the bevy of food product introductions this year?
With 2009’s launch of the McCafé, McDonald’s sparked “coffee wars” with Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and smaller chains around the country. After McDonald’s used aggressive advertising to establish and steal market share for McCafé, the entire coffee category grew, so McDonald’s success in raising awareness led to some competitors also experiencing a boost in sales. This summer’s introduction of smoothies to the series is expected to parallel the launch of the original McCafé line, growing the entire smoothie category, which was valued around $2.5 billion in 2007 by Mintel.
Sofia Therios, marketing director at McDonald’s, explains, “Even though we aren’t the first in the category, we are committed to growing the category.”
Established smoothie makers like Jamba Juice, Panera, and Smoothie King have a similar attitude towards the launch, hoping that McDonald’s big product push will expand overall interest in the category. But given McDonald’s size and commitment to creating a more wholesome product with real fruit, the original smoothie chains have good reason to worry.
On July 13th, McDonald’s premiered two flavors, Wild Berry and Strawberry-Banana, at a value price of $2.29 for a 12 oz. drink compared to Jamba Juice’s smoothies which start at $3.55 for 16 oz. servings. In retaliation to the McDonald’s launch, Jamba Juice aired a commercial featuring the “Cheeseburger Chill” smoothie, mocking McDonald’s entrance into the smoothie market and roots as a burger chain.
The integrated marketing campaign for the McDonald’s smoothie launch includes television and print ads which feature dancers blending the smoothie, as well as paint filled balloon wars that imitate the splashes of flavor. McDonald’s combined these tactics with social media interaction and a creative website that gives fans an opportunity to make their own smoothie art by playing with an addictive spin art app. McDonald’s originally planned three days of nationwide smoothie giveaways, but canceled the giveaways due to fear of running out of the product. It’s possible that the company feared a supply shortage similar to what happened to 2009’s MMNPL winner, KFC’s Grilled Chicken, which ran out of free samples after an endorsement by Oprah.
Will McDonald’s once again liquefy the competition to reach the top 10 of the MMNPL survey? We’ll have to wait and see. Until then, satisfy your summer cravings with a smoothie, or a burger, or a burger smoothie.
With the introduction of groundbreaking 3D technology promoted with highly creative experiential marketing, one brand of TVs is changing the way the world experiences both entertainment and marketing. Even before James Cameron’s movie, Avatar, forever raised the public’s expectations on the entertainment value of 3D visual media, manufacturers were feverishly working to replicate the 3D experience in the home. So who was the first-to-market? Entertainment technophiles know it was Samsung, a brand that has recently been relentless in developing and releasing new technologies before its competitors.
To introduce this innovative and mesmerizing new product line in early March, Samsung hosted a global launch event in Times Square. Avatar producer James Cameron made an appearance to promote the technology, and DreamWorks’ CEO Jeffery Katzenberg announced the next phase of the strategic alliance between the two companies, including putting the Shrek film series on 3D Blu-ray. The Times Square event featured a performance by the Black Eyed Peas, which was filmed in 3D and made available exclusively to Samsung customers.
In addition to the Times Square launch, Samsung also engineered two high profile experiential events to demonstrate category leadership. They created a stunning viral video of 3D projection mapping (over 1 million Youtube views) that debuted in Amsterdam and showed animation that was so realistic, it looked like the historic building on which the video was being projected was crashing to the ground. Samsung also planned and executed a tremendous experiential event in Buenos Aries where 1,256 3D TVs showed amazing three dimensional footage and attracted throngs of people to see displays in different spots across the city.
These buzz generating events are backed by a multi-million dollar “dedicated to wonder” integrated marketing campaign that incorporated ads, social media and cinema advertising at highly-anticipated 3D movies, such as Pixar’s Toy Story 3. To enable consumer trial of the product, Samsung is implementing a national in-store merchandising program that features 5,000 3D kiosks. They are also promoting a “starter kit” to encourage early adopters, which includes two sets of 3D active glasses to watch DreamWorks’ Monsters vs. Aliens or Shrek.
Samsung’s high profile, high budget, memorable product launch is exactly the kind of marketing you would expect from a brand that is forging ahead of the competition. Is it possible for Samsung to achieve category dominance? Only time will tell. (Click here for more about Samsung’s 3D TV product)
If you would like help planning your next launch, contact us at launch@schneiderpr.com or on Twitter @SchneiderPR.
“What specific tactics are you planning to bring your launch strategies to life? Today’s launch tool kit contains an ever-growing array of methods you can activate to grab consumer attention. New tactics are being invented each day, as are new twists on tactics that have been around for decades. Choosing which tactics (old, new or a combination of both) match your new product’s personality and budget becomes increasingly more challenging as the variety of potential campaign elements escalates. All launch choices should be based on your brand’s attributes, the dynamics of the marketplace, how your new product fits within today’s retail environment, the benefits the new product brings to users, and your target consumers’ behaviors and preferences.“To make this discussion simpler, we’ve divided it into two sections—advice on real world tactics, and advice on how to launch in the cyber world. Of course, most things you do in the real world should be translated into online applications to create a fully integrated launch campaign. For example, if you plan a launch event, you’ll be promoting it off -line while talking about it on your Web site, blog, Twitter handle and Facebook fan page, and through other social media channels. Also, your print or TV ads will contain information to drive people to your online properties where they can learn about or buy the product.
“It’s impossible to discuss every possible real world tactic. Your launch plan is limited only by your imagination, budget and target launch date. The tactics we’ve highlighted here are those we’ve witnessed to be highly effective for not only the Most Memorable New Product Launch winners, but for our own clients and other companies as well. In addition to tactics, we’ve included some general launch advice…”
The original Mountain Dew DEWmocracy campaign began in 2007 when the brand created a successful, consumer and social media campaign building up to the January 2009 launch of its new beverage, Voltage. The campaign was named DEWmocracy, and it enabled Mountain Dew’s loyal customers to choose not only the new flavor, but its colors, name, and label graphics. In July 2009, Mountain Dew returned to its recipe for launch success and introduced the aptly-named DEWmocracy 2 campaign.
DEWmocracy 2 was planned as a seven stage campaign, which included a taste-testing truck tour, a Twitter race between the three flavor finalists, and a design contest for the new Dew’s label. DEWmocracy 2 allowed consumers to get more involved in the product selection and the launch process by creating an advertising agency competition asking fans to vote on their favorite 12-second spot from a selection of concepts submitted by different creative agencies. DEWmocracy 2 participants could follow the whole campaign by monitoring the Facebook page, watching video updates on Mountain Dew’s YouTube channel, and checking out the flavor list on Mountain Dew’s Twitter account.
The three flavor finalists in the DEWmocracy 2 campaign – Mountain Dew Distortion, Mountain Dew Typhoon, and Mountain Dew White Out – hit shelves in April 2010. During the 31-day Flavor Campaign, street marketing teams for each flavor finalistvisited cities to rally votes, with polls closing on June 14, 2010. Mountain Dew White Out, the winner of the DEWmocracy 2 campaign, scored 44% of the national votes, and will become a standard flavor in the Dew line of beverages beginning Labor Day.
In the two revolutionary DEWmocracy campaigns, Mountain Dew employed both social media and grassroots marketing tactics to garner unprecedented levels of consumer engagement to decide the newest DEW. It’s clear that the campaign created opportunities for product trial, and most likely helped entice new consumers to try the brand. Will other beverage marketers follow suit and Dew more to engage consumers?
Despite the wide ranging opinions of the iPad before it’s launch on March 5, 2010, this revolutionary product became one of the most successful product launches in Apple’s history, selling more than 3 million products to date. On Cramer Insights, Cramer’s thought leadership and perspectives newsletter, Joan Schneider, president of Schneider Associates and author of “The New Launch Plan,” discusses why the iPad deserves recognition as one of the most well designed communication devices to date. “Companies have started finding ways to use the iPad to enhance business. Now a host of other manufacturers are introducing their own tablet devices to jump into this runaway market,” Schneider states in the article.
To learn more about why the iPad transcends the hype, please follow this link to the Cramer Insights summer 2010 newsletter. To sign up for the Cramer Insights thought leadership newsletter, please click here.
Cramer is a digital marketing and event solutions agency that fuses creativity and technology to design and execute experiences that move audiences. For more than 25 years, the agency has helped the world’s leading and emerging brands win and retain loyal customers, launch products and inspire sales teams. Reaching audiences online, offline, through emerging media and face-to-face, Cramer creates personalized, integrated marketing programs and events that maximize marketing impact—and their clients’ dollars. Cramer’s clients include Boston Scientific, Progress Software, EMD Serono, Inc., Bayer Healthcare and PricewaterhouseCoopers among others. Cramer is a privately held company. For more information, please go to http://www.crameronline.com, or visit their blog at http://www.awidernet.com.
If you would like help planning your next product introduction or launch event, contact us at launch@schneiderpr.com or on Twitter @SchneiderPR.
Schneider Associates (SA) is a full service public relations firm that specializes in Launch Public Relations®. SA launches products, services, companies, and communities for clients ranging from entrepreneurial firms to the nation's largest corporations. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
Sentient Decision Science
Sentient Decision Science was created to bring the visionary advances from the behavioral sciences to the business community in a practical and accessible format in order to move global business forward. Sentient's mission is to become the most sought after resource for behavioral insight by providing unrivaled business advantage to their clients and advancing human knowledge on the drivers of behavior.CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
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