Shiver Me Timbers: Kraft Foods' Processed Marketing Campaign

// Posted November 8th, 2007 by Lisa Thorell

In their recent "Have a Happy Sandwich" marketing campaign, Kraft Foods put some blowback pressure on the rising mass migration toward healthy, organic eating.  The campaign’s centerpiece is a contest on MySpace (myspace.com/haveahappysandwich),  extolling the many forms of happiness created by enjoying a Kraft Singles cheese sandwich .

From its very SpongeBob reminiscent opening pirate, to a little girl watering cheeselet flowers to a Gen Y couple intermixing the cheese theme into their engagement proposal, the clever cross-generational cartoon animation invokes consumers to continue the decades-old tradition of slamming those cheesey slices into your mouth. Play our game, the campaign says: Promulgate our ad campaign by submitting your own video commercial and get a chance to win $50,000 and your own tv spot.

Cheesy Confession

I admit -- as a little kid, I truly enjoyed those little orange plastic packets. Even when my mom was too busy to make up my lunch properly, she could stuff all the components into my lunch bag for school and i got to assemble my precious processed meal delight in the cafeteria. But always being a bit suspicious of that orange dye color, as a college student at Berkeley I graduated to Armenian string cheese. Later as a graduate student, especially living in Berkeley's gourmet ghetto, whoa- the whole lot of these plasticized cheese treats had to go..something about the murmurs of phthalate plasticizer leeching onto high fat content foods to disrupt endocrine function really bothered me.

Rev Your Marketing Engines...

So how does a Krafty supplier of this brilliant "cheese" mommy-saving convenience packaging, part of the American tradition, prevail under the pressures of evolving food wisdom among consumers?

Enter the likes of hip NY office of Nitro combined with the PR powerhouse and viral blogerati marketing god, Edelman, to the rescue.

From Google adwords, Youtube searches to posting on coolfreebielinks.com, the campaign has achieved its intended omnipresence.

(After all the Omincom "functional food" originated marketing claims (CALCIUM) got busted early on. More on that in a moment...)

Indeed a million dollar ad-PR campaign to sweep away consumer concerns on health and food safety with a jolly shared family belly-laugh of animated pirates and two LDL cholsterol-bots grunting and tugging away at a cheese slice could do the trick. The PR engines seem to be humming away with great placements in the NY Times and others. Why even a random posting appeared on Nov 1 by that class-act Reviewstream.com  extolling the virtues of the American processed orange cheese slice. Coincidental!

Some Content Ideas for Your Viral Video Entry

Actually, there's much more fun behind the scenes, boys and girls of the digital marketing age. Today's hip e-moms not only care about convenience and cool marketing, but corporate social responsibility, transparency, knowing what's in their kids food.

Check out:

http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2106.html

or

http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/1167.html

In the latter link, we see the top three companies, Cadbury Schweppes (ticker: CBRY.L), Danone (BSNP), and Unilever (UN), each received the highest EcoValue'21 rating of AAA, while the bottom three companies, Kraft (KFT), ADM (ADM), and Barry Callebaut, each received CCC ratings. (Postscript Apology: I corrected this post - but the original links to Cadbury, Danone and Unilever are no longer available on the SocialFunds site.)

Extracting from that report:

A survey of the 35 largest food processors finds only two mentioning genetic engineering risks in their annual reports, and none analyzing these risks.

SocialFunds.com -- The 2004  report entitled Duty to Disclose: The Failure of Food Companies to Disclose Risks of Genetically Engineered Crops to Shareholders allots a mere two-and-a-half of its 38 pages to actual food company disclosure on genetic engineering (GE). This dearth of discussion is not for lack of research, but for lack of information: only two of the 35 companies surveyed (those topping a list of the largest 100 food processors) mention genetic engineering or related terms in their annual reports. The rest of Duty to Disclose outlines the risks associated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in detail sufficiently enough to make an objective investor wonder why companies are not addressing these risks more comprehensively.

The author of Duty to Disclose, Saida Benguerel of the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) Education Fund, noted that of the company annual reports surveyed, only Kraft (ticker: KFT) and Interstate Bakeries (IBC) mention GE-related risks. However, even these companies fail to elaborate on or analyze these risks. Kraft, Nestle (NESZn), ConAgra (CAG), Farmland Industries, and Hormel (HRL) mention agricultural biotechnology on their websites, but the scant discussion inadequately addresses GE-related risks, according to the report.

Let's see what Coop America's Responsible Shopper profile on Kraft Foods has to say.  While the profile describes some great Kraft recent advances on social responsibility (more recently their Rainforesst allinace), it doesn't sound like Kraft wants to play the Fair Trade game with coffee farmers.

Kraft isn’t reviving its FTC-violating ads, which juxtaposed a Single and a glass of milk and claimed that each cheese slice contained “five ounces of milk” (a judge pointed out, very dryly, that the ads contained false “calcium superiority and milk equivalency claims”).

Even The Sierra Club has launched a campaign against genetically engineered foods.

We’re asking Kraft to remove all genetically engineered products from their foods. This includes not using milk from rBGH-treated cows (the U.S. is the only industrialized nation that permits this practice) and not using genetically engineered (GE) corn, potatoes, soy and so forth.

Duplicity or Authenticity?

More intereseting backdrop. This being the age of the search engines, you can google "Kraft singles" and for ages of google pages, you'll find naught but Kraft marketing links. (Ah-- these people are good at what they do...).

Only 5 Days Left to Post Your Video!

Boys and Girls, what we'd really like to see is a rogue video entry from the likes of Galaxy Nutritional Foods, who has a much lower market share cheese alternative. In this video, GNF would expouse  the "happiness" of lower cholesterol, non-GMO cheese slices. (Alas- there's that plastic wrap problem though-- wouldst that someone could come up with a corn-based thin plastic that didn't leech.....).

Shiver me timbers indeed. If you're willing to take a cholsterol hit for to get happy for a great cheese sandwich, screw the plastic wrap and undisclosed mystery food and try this.

Show some taste. Using the latest viral marketing digital tools, doth not a great tasting, authentic cheese sandwich make.