Each year the APCM (Québec’s association of marketing-communications professionals) recognizes the best marketing-communication strategies. This year, the Grand Prix winner is Kraft Dinner.
While the brand is also a symbol of popular culture in Québec, it had not been advertised in the province for the past ten years and sales were declining. Kraft and its agency, Taxi, developed a strategy and campaign to drive volume.
On the surface, Kraft Dinner is a tough sell in Québec. Quebeckers are passionate about food. In fact, our What Québec Wants study reveals that significantly more Quebeckers than Canadians in the ROC believe they have more discerning tastes in foods than most (40% in Québec compared to 28% in the ROC). They love to cook and are proud of the meals they prepare.
Rather than attempt to overcome negative perceptions of the brand as being over processed, the strategy leveraged a simple truth: despite its image, most Quebeckers like Kraft Dinner but they are embarrassed to say so and often feel guilty eating it.
This insight was dramatized in a cleverly executed integrated campaign.
Out-of-home posters showed consumers one would not expect to eat Kraft Dinner. Their identity was partly hidden by a box of Kraft Dinner. Among them was Dany Turcotte, the well-known co-host of the top rated talk show Tout le monde en parle. Product placement gave this campaign a major boost when Turcotte was presented with a bowl of KD during the show.
On television, a man is seen eating Kraft Dinner. He then switches his recycling bin containing the empty box of KD with his neighbour’s bin.
A transit shelter poster was fitted to distribute boxes of the product. You can see it in action via this short video presentation of the case (in French).
The campaign was meant to not only stop the declining sales but also increase them by 15% before the end of 2013. In three months, sales increased by 17.2%
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