As with any new marketing program, when Kraft American Singles began its “Tuesday Night Tickets” promotion three years ago with Minor League Baseball it had no idea how it would all turn out. Well, each year the program has shown better and better results based on a formula that offers moms an incentive to purchase the cheese and in return receive discounted tickets to enjoy a family outing at the ball field.
The word “American” in American Cheese has led the way for Kraft to strike a number of iconic American partnerships since its launched its “American Cheese” campaign in 2009, not only with Minor League Baseball, but earlier this year with “Disney on Ice.”
One of the most important marketing components for the “Disney on Ice” partnership was to put messaging on Single’s packs. That idea was translated, for the first time, to “Tuesday Night Tickets” with the expectation that results will soar. Redemption last year for “Tuesday Night Tickets” was up 43% over 2009 when 28,633 wrappers were redeemed. Marketing included radio and newspaper ads, in-store promotions and incentives for fans before, during and after the games at the stadium, Marisa Zimmerman, Senior Associate Brand Manager, KRAFT Singles, said.
This marks the third year that Kraft Singles will offer “Tuesday Night Tickets,” with the first game played Tuesday night. From April 12 through Sept. 6, shoppers who buy the cheese can bring the wrappers to a ballpark box office on Tuesday nights and buy one ticket and get another ticket free. Some 150 teams are participating in 30 core markets.
Kraft is adding some steam to its marketing, leveraging the partnership assets via in-stadium and digital assets, ads in the program book and messaging on the Minor League Web sites and Facebook pages. Online tool kits have been provided to retailers to use the creative assets in stores. And in Kraft’s 30 core markets where ballpark attendance is high, the brand will increase both in-store and team activations. New this year, in-stadium activities and bi-lingual signage will be incorporated with five teams that have high Hispanic audiences.
“There’s a lot we’re doing this year to build on last year,” Zimmerman said.
Continue reading on next page: Going Green: Kraft Partners with TerraCycle
Going green
Also new this year, Kraft is playing on consumer’s “green” concerns by partnering with TerraCycle to encourage customers to recycle the cheese wrappers, through a promotion called “Cheese Brigade.” Families collect wrappers, bags and containers from their Kraft Cheese purchases and send them to TerraCycle, which upcycles them into other products ranging from office supplies and totes to decorative accessories. TerraCycle and Kraft Foods pay postage and two cents per unit of packaging to a charity of the collector’s choice.
Several Kraft Foods brands, including Capri Sun beverages, Nabisco and Oscar Mayer Lunchables are now lead sponsors of TerraCycle Brigades. Since 2008, the Capri Sun Drink Pouch Brigade has diverted over 50 million pouches and paid over $1 million to schools and non-profits.
Continue Reading on Next Page: Cooking up a community: Real Women of Philadelphia Recipe Contest
Cooking up a community
In another development, Kraft has unveiled a cookbook that compiles 80 winning recipes among thousands who submitted online recipes last summer that used Philadelphia Cream Cheese as an ingredient in the “Real Women of Philadelphia Recipe Contest,” as part of its new cooking strategy for the brand. The cookbook follows an eBook it released for cream cheese, “Spread a Little Joy.”
Under the “Real Women” contest, cooking videos at the site were a big draw and used across the Internet to draw attention to the contest. The contest was designed to develop and build an online community of likeminded women. It began July 19 and each week through Nov. 7 one contestant won $500 for a total of 80 winners.
“What we’re hoping to do is build a community of advocates who are passionate about cooking and Philadelphia Cream Cheese that we can have a relationship with over time while driving volume and sales,” Adam Butler, brand manager for Philadelphia Cream Cheese, said. “The great thing about this program is it does both.”
The contest ran in partnership with “Food Network” superstar Paula Deen, whose introduction is included in “Real Women of Philadelphia: The Cookbook,” along with the four winners who had the best recipes in the categories of appetizer, entrée, side dish and dessert. The book was published by Lulu.
Continue reading on Next Page: The Search for ROI
The search for ROI
For Kraft, counting the numbers of redeemed wrappers in the Disney and Minor League Baseball promotions makes determining ROI easy, but understanding the impact of an online recipe contest is more challenging.
“The digital connection to sales can be a tough nut to crack and a lot of companies are trying to gage the success of these programs,” Butler said.
To best understand the impact of the contest, Kraft looked at three criteria. First it reviewed site activity, how many people came to the site and how many watched videos. Prior research has shown that there is a correlation between people who come to Kraft sites and watch videos and sales at retail. Second, Kraft ran a test control study with Dime Store to determine changes in purchase intent for cream cheese from people who were exposed to the campaign. And third, it worked with Nielsen to conduct a standard marketing mix analysis to look at historical changes in sales and to decouple the effects of advertising and marketing on sales to see which vehicles are the most efficient.
“The point of all that detail is really to try to triangulate the success of the program across a number of analysis techniques; are they engaging, watching videos, how confident do we feel the program actually is,” Butler said. “Across every single one of those metrics this program was effective at not only building long-term brand equity and community but very effective at driving short term sales.”
As of last week, he said that more than 400,000 consumers had visited the community with 40,000 who had opted in, signed up with a profile and are actively engaged spending an average nine minutes per visit.
“To date we have not sent a brand-wide mass communication,” he said. “We want to be very judicious about that. Part of the appeal of building a community overtime, is you do have access to those people and you can email them overtime. But the great thing is they are all on the community and we post information there for them all to see. We’re still trying to figure out what the right relationship is going to be.”
The backbone of marketing the community is getting consumers to watch the videos. Many of the videos submitted are distribute over the Web to build scale. Kraft took over home pages of food sites, ran banner and print ad.
“When you compare the campaign to TV, print, coupons, in-store activity and a lot of other things, the analysis that came back said the “Real Women” program is one of the most efficient marketing vehicles that we deploy,” Butler said. “It was a surprising report.”
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