28 November 2011
What does a company do when one of its flagship brands commands 90 percent of the market, but finds smaller competitors chipping away at that lead?
“We’re not as big internationally as companies like Kraft,” he said, but “we’re turning toward international and have some key growth markets we’re going after.”
As the company oversees Latin America from its Mexico headquarters and begins setting up operations in Brazil, it remains keenly focused on Puerto Rico, where it’s always been a major player.
The market “has approximately 3.5 million people and for ConAgra it’s about a $40 million market,” he said. “Chef Boyardee… accounts for 92 percent of [sales in] the canned pasta category.
But “one of the country brands started chiseling away at our market share and that made us wake up,” he added.
To that end, ConAgra launched a marketing plan aimed at retaking Chef Boyardee’s place in the market. hoping to capitalize on such advantages as lower sodium than competitors, an easy-to-open can, a better tomato sauce and, most importantly, the emotional attachment to the brand.
The ongoing effort includes a foray into social media, where the company to date has only dabbled, as well as television ads that draw on Puerto Rico’s emotional attachment to the brand. The main challenge, however, is to convince consumers that Chef Boyardee is a ‘complete’ meal.
“Mothers were concerned that they were not doing their jobs; feeding the family good, nutritious food,” he said. “We tried to make our communications very family-oriented, talking about how families come together at the time of dinner and how Chef Boyardee is the element that ties different generations” together.
Yet “convincing mothers of that… is a real sell to take on,” said Fernando D’Annunzio, Latin America marketing director for Brightstar.
Many agreed that the healthy trend is catching on in Latin America, though faster in some countries than others.
“Normally Latin America is a follower of a trend, but that area of healthy food is definitely the way to go in the future,” said Tito Rodriguez, director of strategic marketing for Olympus Latin America. “If you are not working on the healthy side of food, you’re going to be left behind in a few years.”
Beyond advertising the emotion attached to the brand and other features, “you might want to expand beyond advertising to make sure you’re hitting all channels,” said Fernando Figueredo, chair of the public relations and advertising department at Florida International University. “You can use public relations to get credibility for the brand.”
Though ConAgra has a hired a local public relations team in Puerto Rico to run the effort, it may be relying more heavily on digital communications for this campaign.
“We’re going to build a website, we’re going to have connections with the Facebook and other initiatives,” del Solar said, “I cannot talk much about it, but we’re going to be online more and more.”
Marketing Connections is one of seven event series organized by WorldCity to bring together multinational executives to discuss international business topics. The marketing series is sponsored by Quaxar and Marketwise Group. The next Marketing Connections event is set for Jan. 20.