PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR ‘OREO’

Introduction

The purpose of this project is to promote the three ‘Oreo’ products to a specific buying public and inform the prospective consumers about their existence and their advantages that would answer their nutritional needs. It focuses on a powerful advertising campaign that specifies the benefits of the products and their role in a customer’s life. This project aims to create a positive image of our products and persuade customers to switch to our brand.

As the rising obesity tide continues to plague the U.S. and other states and as childhood obesity is a growing concern, the World Health Organization has compiled food-based dietary guidelines to encourage an improved quality of both diet and lifestyle. Thus, with the new health and wellness consumer trends, we have developed and introduced healthier and portion controlled snacks that are amounted with less cholesterol and fats.

The world-famous Oreo brand continues to expand and fulfill new customer demands. Due to the fact that lifestyle changes towards health and nutrition are highly promoted, Oreo introduced health and nutritional products. Now, people can maintain their weight with 100 Calorie Pack Oreo, Sugar Free Oreo and Reduced Fat Oreo.

1. Product characteristics and 4)target customer 3. logo slogan

The origin of the name ‘Oreo’ has a three-fold meaning. It is speculated to be a derivative of the French word, ‘or’, meaning gold, since the original packaging was golden. Another hypothesis is that it was named after the Greek word for mountain, ‘Oreo’, because the test version of the cookie had a curved-hill type shape. The third variant is that they took the ‘re’ from ‘cream’ and put it between two ‘o’ s and had ‘o-re-o’.

As cookie sales began to slowly decline a few years ago because consumer’s buying habits were shifting towards low calories and fat free products, Oreo decided to expand its snacks line and comply with the modern diet trends. In order to gain back old consumers and attract new consumers, it developed a wide variety of products containing low or no amount of sugar or fat such as 100 Calorie Pack Oreo, Sugar Free Oreo and Reduced Fat Oreo.

The above-mentioned products have the following characteristics:

o 100 Calorie Pack Oreo biscuits are miniature, thin, hexagonal versions of the classic Oreo biscuit, have no cream-filling, and come individually portioned into 100 calories (420 kJ) pouches.

o Sugar Free Oreo were introduced in 2006, cost over twice as much as regular Oreos, and have small trace amounts of sugar, 10 fewer calories per serving, 0.5 grams more fat and 450% more fiber.

o Reduced Fat Oreo were introduced in 2006, cost the same as regular Oreos, have as much sugar as the regular Oreo biscuit, 10 fewer calories per serving, about 35% less fat and the same amount of fiber.

At Kraft Foods, we became aware of the noticeable shift in society’s eating habits and realized that we needed to come up with a new product to accommodate those who do not purchase our products. This included consumers who abide by some kind of strict diet plan. Since the health diet trend refers to low fat diets, we used all these trends in the development of a new range of products. This category contains lower amounts of fat per serving and lower grams of sugar by using sweetener instead.

2. Target customer

These products are intended to appeal to women, to elderly people, to people who suffer from diabetes and to anyone who is sensitive about their figure. The target market is primarily directed towards women aged 18-45 who are health conscious, yet still enjoy consuming sweets. The target customers have an income ranging from middle to upper middle. We intend to establish as target audience people who want to be healthy and fit, but have difficulties in eliminating those sweet indulgences they crave and desire, consumers who probably have low self control or self discipline in regards to what foods they consume. Elders and people afflicted with diabetes also constitute a target audience because they have to stick to their medical imposed diets. The target market will purchase these products for themselves and possibly their spouses. As a result of the increasing problem of obesity amongst children, we have made our children our secondary target market.

The behavioral patterns of our primary target include uncontrolled eating, which results afterwards in a feeling of guilt for losing self-control. These products entail low involvement decision-making, because they are not intended to be considered large purchases. Moreover, they provide our target consumers with a type of food they can indulge in. More than likely, our target market will eat only one serving, which is three cookies, at a time. This is just enough to give them their “fix” and satisfy their cravings.

o All products are developed with the purpose of providing easy snacking that is controlled and fitted for their necessities. Women are Oreo’s primary target for these products and these biscuit snacks are selected specifically to be separated from the other pre-proportioned snacks and placed into bags with labels of “100 Calories.
SLOGAN
100 calorie snacks are produced to help consumers manage their portions. The 100 calorie packs slogan states, “Balance your diet with 100 calorie snacks”. These pre-portioned snacks SUPPORT people in the process of balancing their daily food intake. With 100 calorie packs, consumers are educated to pay careful attention on what size portion they are eating because portion control is essential in maintaining weight. With these new products, we are able to serve people that have chosen to adapt to a healthy eating life style. Our products make Kraft Foods a company that supports those that have adopted a healthy eating lifestyle.

ELDERS. diabetes 4.Promotional tools

With the increasing obesity percentage in American children, which rises as far as up to 33% in recent years, and along with the awareness-raising campaigns, many producers have developed new products in line with the pressing necessities. For the Oreo products that are sensible to people’s desire to watch their weight, respectively 100 Calorie Pack Oreo, Sugar Free Oreo and Reduced Fat Oreo, we propose a marketing campaign addressed to women and elders. We motivate our choice by the well-known fact that women are self-conscious about their appearance and more preoccupied with their health; elders represent a strong target domain because in many cases, their food choices, particularly sweets, are restricted by medically-imposed diets. The first step in communicating with the public would be to send out a press release explaining our new product and when distribution will begin. Press releases and media kits would be sent to food retailers, editors of Food & Science, as well as the editors for magazines we plan to advertise in.

Advertising In order to reach our target audience, we will run advertisements in major magazines throughout the country. We will choose magazines that are either destined to women, like: Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle or providing information and advices towards maintaining one’s health like: Health, Women’s Health, Self. We propose running advertisements in cooking magazines, as those are more likely to reach our elderly sector; also, advertisements will appear in magazines like People, because they can reach a wide range of consumers. Television spots for broadcast and cable networks will appear on various stations to reach our target. The commercials will focus on introducing the new product by linking it to the promoted values of the brand. Thus, they will promote family images, where mothers and grandparents can enjoy their quality time with their children and nephews without worrying about their health or about gaining weight. This strategy will also focus on making Oreo part of one’s diet, by ensuring the consumers that this product is particularly designed to fit with their necessities. We will run them during popular shows amongst women and soap operas. In keeping with the changing media landscape, our strategy will promote the products through social media, by connecting millions of consumers to each other (and the brand). Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are ideal tools for our campaign, whose strategy is rooted in connecting family and friends. We will feature video advertisements on YouTube and we will offer information about our products in an interactive, consumer-friendly approach. We will display advertisements on billboards along high traffic roads and highways, which will increase our likelihood of reaching a large percentage of our audience. Reaching people while they are in their vehicles will increase the possibility of immediate purchase.

Direct marketing In order to approach our consumers in a direct way, we will create interactive consumer websites. They will feature polls, games and information provided in an accessible, entertaining manner. We will design engaging virtual activities like ‘Create your own Oreo recipe, according to your needs’, and we will reward the most popular recipe. This stratagem will not only permit the female consumers to interact with their favourite brand in a personalized, participative way but will also provide us with essential feedback from our targeted audience. We will improve our advertising campaign by running online display ads, that will transfer the consumers, by means of a simple click, to the page where they can buy the products, according to their preferences, or they can enter contests, polls or be informed about promotional products.

Publicity In order to maximize our publicity, our methods will include running commercials featuring celebrities that are popular to women, conducting online polls, running radio commercials designed for the elderly audience, arranging speeches and debates on overweight issues, diabetes and other diseases that impose a diet and are relevant for our target sectors.

Sales promotion We will offer promotions by relating our product to other products in the same category, and with the same targeted audience: for example, we will adjoin a pack of Sugar free or Reduced Fat Oreos to dietetic milk products or Cereal, in promoting a healthy, nutritional breakfast.

5. The promotional campaign - Advantages and disadvantages Advantages Oreo is the world’s largest selling cookie brand so one of the strengths of our campaign will rely on the power of the brand, because we are connecting the new products to the familial values that are already appreciated by our consumers. Given the fact that so far the targeted audience was represented by children, our campaign will embrace in a systematic, persuasive manner other sectors of the market: adults and elders. By observing the shift in the society’s eating habits, we will not only address other age categories, but a different sector altogether: people who are on diets, who are health-aware and people who watch their weight. By promoting the health and wellness of our consumers we will reinforce the positive image of our brand, and will enable the target audience as well as the fans to gain more trust in our products.

Disadvantages Our product will be more expensive than the regular Oreo biscuits, which may permit other labels to cut into our market share, by providing similar products at a lower price. Low fat products are not a novelty on the market, and there are brands that specialize entirely on providing low sugar, low fat, carbohydrates free and dietetic biscuits. These brands have more products, more flavours, more experience and recognition from the part of the targeted audience. Consumers have become interested in low or no fat intake. Although our products indeed offer low fat and sugar, they can not compete with other goods that have no fat, no carbohydrates and no sugar at all.