How do you continue to drive growth when everyone knows your brands? For Kraft Heinz chief marketing and category officer Michael Magee, it’s about showing up in new, unexpected places and anticipating demand.
“We’re blessed to have some of the most iconic brands in the pantry,” Magee told Nicolette Briscoe and Tom Fogden, the hosts of the AANA x B&T Brand Masters podcast.
You can listen to it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
“We’ve got to keep our brands top of mind. In order to recruit new households, we’ve got to be top of mind.
“Innovation provides an opportunity to bring in new households as well. Over the last 12 months, we’ve done a number of new campaigns specifically designed to revive some of our categories.”
While, reader, you and know that Beanz Meanz Heinz, it appears that not everyone is so au fait with the world’s leading purveyor of sauced-up haricot beans or the fact that they’re nutritionally rich.
Similarly, Heinz’s Tomato Ketchup has been facing a number of insurgent threats from across the category.
Magee’s remedy to this were campaigns for Ketchup that adapted award-winning global work for the Aussie market and new work that reintroduced beans to Aussie families.
That said, Kraft Heinz is also faced with a market in flux. As Australia’s demographic makeup changes, so do our tastes.
“The population is changing quite rapidly and perhaps faster than people realise, both in the growth of the population but also in its composition in terms of ethnicity,” said Magee, adding that New Zealand is also experiencing similar changes.
“It’s important to realise that there’s a high proportion of people in Australia for whom English is not their first language and perhaps they weren’t born here… You’ve got some old traditional categories like gravy which is needing to evolve a bit better to serve consumers and we are doing things in that space that are flavour driven.
“But also in areas like mayo where particularly from an Asian perspective… we’ve just launched a hot range with things like hot peri-peri, which is a very popular flavour,” Magee added.
Click here to listen to the full chat.
