The Challenge:As the number two national brand in the supermarket cheese business, Sargento faces a growing challenge from private label products while also battling a larger branded competitor in Kraft. Private label dominates share in the category, generating an atmosphere of continual price-driven competition. The stigma once associated with buying private label brands has all but disappeared and quality differences have been marginalized in the consumers mind. Price-based competition is a slippery slope, and being all things to all people is never a recipe for remarkable brand differentiation.
The Solution:The pathway to victory begins with redefining the brand's target audience, looking for a more engaged and passionate consumer, and building a relationship that transcends the limitations imposed by category market behavior. The answer for Sargento is the Food Adventurer. Food Adventurers are people who have a passion for the kitchen. They love to cook, getting emotional satisfaction and self-esteem from making great things to eat. They buy cookbooks, watch Food TV programs, respect well-known chefs and have a penchant for experimentation and creativity at the stove. This audience is engaged and listening. They are open to brands that help them realize their culinary passions.
To launch this new relationship, Sargento created Bistro Blends, a proprietary blend of premium natural shredded cheese combined with herbs and spices. The result is a cheese product suitable for cooking and recipes, offering more opportunities for experimentation and creativity beyond the usual role of bagged cheese used as a topping.
Our mission is to help force reappraisal of who and what Sargento is as a brand. The agency is borrowing equity from a respected, well-known celebrity chef whose background and cooking fit well with Food Adventurer aspirations. Chef Michael Chiarello, author, winemaker, Food TV chef and host of his own NapaStyle show on the Fine Living Channel, is an icon for Food Adventurers.
A combination of ingredients opened a dialogue with Food Adventurers by making relevant contributions to their lives in the kitchen:
- A series of satellite media tours focused on entertaining occasions
- An entertaining DVD built around extraordinary uses of Bistro Blends
- Promotional events including a project to help Food Adventurers live the dream of publishing their own cookbook
- Desk-side meetings with top national magazine food editors to showcase innovative uses of Bistro Blends
The Results:Chiarello brings cachet to the media table and helps elevate the brand as a possibility in creative cooking. Sargento has generated more editorial media attention in the last 12 months than at any other time in its 50-year history. Bistro Blends has exceeded expectations in velocity and volume during its first year on the shelf. More importantly, the Food Adventurer strategy is an over-arching brand platform idea that instantly offers multiple channel communications opportunities and becomes a guide for future brand behavior in new product development and communications. The pathway out of commodity land is clear -- the road ahead shows great promise.
SEE THE RESULTS click to enlarge
