Situation
Turkey is the healthy protein. That was the conventional marketing message Jennie-O Foodservice, and all other turkey suppliers, used for years. Collectively, they had the most to gain by increasing the number of instances of turkey on menus. Everyone’s volume was rising.
There was a ceiling though, almost all menus today have a turkey burger and a turkey sandwich on them, so the only way to increase pound shipments is to steal customers from rivals.
To create a unique space, Perdue had staked out No Antibiotics Ever (NAE) turkey by switching their entire line to NAE and touting the benefits of this designation. Butterball had focused its efforts on culinary expansions showing chefs how to use their products to create interesting menu items. Jennie-O had been doing both of these tactics in small ways, but wasn’t getting credit for them in the industry.
Challenge
Jennie-O asked us to increase their brand recognition through enhanced differentiation.
Role
I was the main point of the contact with the client, and led the internal agency team working on this campaign.
Insights
After a review of market trends, turkey competition, internal sales data, customer and potential customer interviews, my team determined that Jennie-O could own the “all natural” turkey category. All natural turkey is minimally processed and contains no artificial ingredients. Jennie-O already had the largest line of all natural turkey products on the market, but had them mixed into other lines and categories. All natural fit restaurant operators’ need to give transparency to their customers and all natural was cheaper for them to purchase than No Antibiotics Ever. It was also a fast growing segment that was desirable to independent restaurants, national accounts, and institutional customers.
All of these were interesting facts, but key to the campaign was finding that almost all consumers were more likely to try a new restaurant if it severed all natural proteins. This gave our creative team the ground they needed to create work that showed restaurant operators how to solve their biggest challenge, customer traffic.
Action
We presented a case to the client’s leadership that a new sub-brand was needed to improve long-term focus of product development, sales incentives, messaging to the sales team, and content creation for a multi-year campaign.
The primary goal of the all natural works was to generate leads for the sales team. This new sub-brand appealed to new customers and Jennie-O needed to uncover who they were. Content was created for social media, print media, banner ads, e-blasts, and content marketing that pushed operator traffic to a new landing page where they could learn more about how all natural could increase restaurant traffic and profits.
The landing page was created with multiple interaction opportunities, such as downloads for more information, or “contact us” forms to learn more. Each interaction point included a mechanism to gather information about new customer leads, and allow them to opt-in to further communication.
The site had a secondary purpose of assisting the sales team during sales calls. All of the product information and photos they needed to facilitate a call were incorporated into the page for easy references. This also allowed the sales team to show operators that the web page was a resource to help them in their decision making.
Result
Jennie-O quickly made all natural a priority, and made all natural sales growth their main 2018 strategy, taking my team’s sub-brand and campaign recommendations, and putting them into action. This focus allowed all of their teams to aim their resources at one target. The R&D team only developed new all natural items. All of their quarterly sales goals were focused on growing segments of the all natural line. And, almost all marketing dollars drove leads back to sales.
Theodore Schweitz 