http://www.brandchannel.com/features_webwatch.asp?ww_id=379
Winning the Canadian Marketing Association’s 2008 “Best of the Best” Award, the acclaimed campaign for New Shreddies – created by Ogilvy&Mather marketing agency – was an ingenious and innovative customer-driven marketing strategy that revived the 67 year old brand. In the blog post, “Diamond Shreddies” by Renee Alexander, the blogger explained how this campaign garnered so much attention in that year.
I believe that Ogilvy&Mather approached their marketing strategy for Kraft Foods to revive the Shreddies cereal brand with a keen and savvy eye. At that time, all cereal brands had “positioned themselves as kid-friendly through cartoon spokespeople and animals or good for you because of their healthy ingredients,” yet none approached their campaign with humour. Therefore, the New Shreddies campaign differentiated themselves from their competitors by positioning the cereal with a sense of humour, poking fun at the fact that new diamond Shreddies were more exciting than the boring old square Shreddies. But, all the company had done was shift the old square Shreddies 45 degrees. As a result, the campaign created superior customer value without altering the original product by offering an exciting new look. When developing an integrated marketing mix, Ogilvy&Mather concentrated on promotion in the 4 Ps. For instance, the campaign included an outrageously funny commercial which fervently advocated that new diamond Shreddies were “better,” “crunchier”, and “more flavourful,” yet in fact they were exactly the same as the old Shreddies. The campaign increased customer delight which inherently led loyal customers (true friends) to begin promoting the new Shreddies through consumer-generated marketing of food blogs. Furthermore, the company also created a website where customers could actively participate in the vote to keep or drop the new diamond Shreddies. The success of this campaign was evident when Kraft Foods saw “an immediate 18% increase in baseline sales of Shreddies in the first month alone.”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ds7WzVeew[/youtube]