The campaign, now under way, carries the theme “Make something amazing,” with Kraft advising consumers that they can fix outstanding meals and snacks when they use the five products: Kraft Singles, Kraft grated parmesan, Kraft shredded cheeses, Kraft Natural Slices and a newcomer, Kraft Fresh Take.
The campaign has a budget estimated at more than $50 million, which executives at Kraft Foods are calling the largest single investment in the last decade in their cheese and dairy products. The campaign, by McGarryBowen, an agency that is part of the Dentsu Network West unit of Dentsu, is another example of the resurgence in marketing efforts for packaged foods that began with the financial crisis and continues as the economy remains uncertain.
The trend is underscored by a decision by Dannon, part of Groupe Danone, to advertise for the first time during a Super Bowl. A commercial for Dannon Oikos Greek yogurt is to appear in the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5, joining the event’s longtime sponsors like Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, General Motors and PepsiCo.
“More and more people are eating at home,” said Tim Snyder, vice president for marketing at another food giant, Mars Food, which sells brands like Uncle Ben’s rice products. That led Mars Food and its agency, BBDO San Francisco, to start a campaign last year with the theme “Begin with Ben,” as well as start a Ben’s Beginners cooking contest this week, meant to encourage parents and children to spend time together preparing meals.
ConAgra Foods recently began running commercials on 15 television networks for a venerable product, Hunt’s canned tomatoes. The spots, created by the SapientNitro division of Sapient, bring a celebrity chef, George Duran, into supermarkets. And the Campbell Soup Company has been flooding magazines with ads that are part of a campaign called “It’s amazing what soup can do”; some issues carry five or six ads from the campaign.
One such Campbell’s ad, featuring a recipe for a dish called Beef Taco Skillet, which is made with Campbell’s tomato soup, reassures nervous cooks with the headline “Requires: One Skillet, No Skill.”
The Campbell’s ads promote a repository of recipes on a Web site, campbellskitchen.com. Likewise, the Kraft cheese campaign directs consumers to a recipe-centric Web site, kraftcheese.com, an offshoot of kraftrecipes.com.
“We’re trying to invest more in our iconic brands,” said Racquel Harris, vice president for marketing in the Kraft cheese group at the Kraft Foods office in Glenview, Ill., in order to “amplify our emotional connection with consumers.”
The cheese campaign includes an anthemic commercial that runs 60 seconds, rather than the usual 30 seconds, to introduce the “Make something amazing” theme. The spot has appeared during two prominent TV events — the People’s Choice Awards, on CBS, and the Golden Globe Awards, on NBC — and is to return on Jan. 25 to run on an episode of “American Idol” on Fox.
The commercial features an upbeat pop song, “Bright Idea,” by a Canadian band named Mother Mother. As the song plays, a wide variety of adults and children are shown having fun as they cook, eat and snack.
“At Kraft, we’re stretching our cheese as far as it can go,” an announcer declares. “So go ahead, make something amazing.”
The campaign also includes online ads, cooking video clips on kraftcheese.com, social media, promotions in stores and coupon inserts in newspapers.
An umbrella campaign provides “a bigger play” by adding “the voice of Kraft” to the ads, said Tim Scott, president of the Chicago office of McGarryBowen, which also creates ads for Kraft Foods brands like Crystal Light, Maxwell House, Oscar Mayer and Miracle Whip.
The idea also reflects that “most consumers have multiple cheese products in the refrigerator,” he added.
The theme is intended to present Kraft cheeses as “a spark of inspiration,” Mr. Scott said, leaving it to consumers to create dishes that range “from simple to elaborate.”
For decades, Kraft ran ads that sold several Kraft products at the same time, which ran during radio and television shows like “Kraft Music Hall,” “Kraft Television Theatre” and “Kraft Suspense Theatre.” Many of those commercials were voiced by the same announcer, Ed Herlihy, who promoted Kraft’s “good food and good food ideas” from the 1940s through the 1980s.
The new cheese product that is part of the campaign, Kraft Fresh Take, is one of at least 70 that Kraft Foods plans to bring out in 2012. Others include belVita Breakfast biscuits, Kraft Sizzling Salads dinner kits and MilkBite bars.
The parade of new products comes as Kraft Foods prepares this year to divide into two companies, one focused on mainstay grocery staples in North America, among them Kraft cheeses, and the other on treats and candy like Cadbury and Oreo.
On Tuesday, Kraft Foods said it would prepare for the changes by consolidating offices, reorganizing sales operations and cutting 1,600 jobs in the United States and Canada.
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