Suffering from a great downfall, famed dessert company Jell-O from Kraft Foods has announced it will return to its classic “food for fun” branding (Schultz 2013). Once popular for their celebrity-starring advertisements, Jell-O had begun an adult-focused approach, consequently causing over fifty percent of sales to decline. The company’s new campaign marketer has future plans to rebrand Jell-O back to its familial, fun approach. The advertising budget is said to double and will include prints, digital and TV marketing.
Jell-O could have potentially avoided their current predicament if they had adapted to consumer tastes throughout the years. We discussed a similar scenario in class about Blackberry, once an extremely popular company that proceeded in a downward spiral. With their recent phone sales declining tremendously, they decided to shift their efforts towards software development (Monica 2016) and eradicate their production of phones for good. Both companies did not immediately evolve their products to suit current consumer wants and tastes.
With several months of debating Jell-O’s new image with qualitative and quantitative consumer testing, the company has ultimately come to perfect their stance among other snack competitors in the market. This ties in to Class eight’s topics regarding positioning and value propositions (Cubbon 2012). Jell-O established the socio-demographic of “familial” with a psychographic of a “fun” lifestyle. It was apparent that Jell-O struggled in the positioning segment, as it is nearly impossible to change a consumer’s perception—in their case concerning the unhealthiness of the snack. Jell-O was popular during the Atkins-diet era, however it failed to essentially keep up with the current healthy eating trends.
Through the use of specific marketing tools (segmentation, targeting, positioning and value propositions) Jell-O from Kraft Foods will theoretically combat their competitors with a re-established, up-to-date successful brand.
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Works Cited
Cubbon, Paul. 2012. Vimeo. September 13. Accessed October 1, 2016. https://vimeo.com/49370591.
Monica, Paul R. La. 2016. CNN.com. September 26. Accessed October 1, 2016. http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/28/technology/blackberry-outsource-phones/ .
Schultz, E.J. 2013. Adage. August 12. Accessed October 1, 2016. http://adage.com/article/news/kraft-launches-campaign-revive-jell-o/243616/.