Planters Peanuts Case Study nac ks kS Jun Planters’ year over year sales were down 3.5% and it had been losing market share in the nuts and seeds category. Peanuts in general were losing market share to other nuts and seeds due to growing concerns over allergies. e advertising dollars spent on almonds were 20 times higher than peanuts. e ever growing snacking market had also stalled growth for nuts as people were offered more healthier and tastier alternatives.
Objective Looking at the problems, it was clear that peanuts were no longer a top of mind option when people considered snacking. e objective of this campaign was to reverse the declining growth by increasing top-of-mind consideration and put peanuts in a position to become a leader in the snack category.
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Problem
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To revive Planters Peanuts, an iconic brand that hasn’t done much in the recent years and lost its category leadership.
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brownies to healthy snacks like yogurt and granolas. Our target falls right in between these two broad categories. ey are neutral or, the way put it, ‘Nutrals.’ e following quote from our survey best describes our target, “I am eating peanuts ‘cause they’re delicious and I know they’re not bad for me.”
Strategy
Target
We knew that our target was overwhelmed by the number of choices available for snacking. Our key insight was that there was nothing special about peanuts and no innovation was possible. It was a simple, old snack. We decided to embrace this while deciding our strategy;
As you can see in the diagram, there are a wide variety of snacks ranging from junk snacks like ice-creams, chips and
‘Peanuts bring simple times to my snacking life.’
Creative To keep in line with the voice the brand had carried for a century, the voice of this campaign had to be tongue-incheek, honest and confident. Our tag line, ‘Made with Peanuts,’ emphasized the simplicity of this snack.
In-Store We decided to concentrate most of our efforts in grocery stores after we found a Forbes report that said 70% of snacking decisions are made in store. e main idea of the creative was to make overly simple suggestions of how to incorporate peanuts into your snack life by taking them beyond the snack isle in grocery stores. When you enter the store you will first see a map on the grocery carts which shows where peanuts are available in the store. Examples of in-aisle displays for the beer and ice cream aisle are shown on the right.
We decided to take the same concept to convenience stores since peanuts are distributed there and are a popular ‘on-thego’ snack. Below are two examples of such displays in convenience stores.
Print Since our concept has been about taking peanuts out of the snack isle and showing consumers how they can be incorporated into their snack life, we wanted to do the same with print ads. So we decided to juxtapose Planters ads with other beer and ice cream ads. e ad on the right is an example of how this would look in a magazine. e right side of the page has an ad for Bud Light.
Digital
Line Extension
We took the recipes page on the planters website and decided to make it a little more interactive. is would be another way to remind our visitors how simple it is to pair peanuts with other products thereby incorporating them into their snack life. We created an application called the Recipe Aggregator.
To further emphasize the simplicity of peanuts and also stay true to the tongue-in-cheek voice of the campaign we decided to introduce a limited edition line extension of 3 chambered in-shell peanuts which we called Planters Fancy. ese would be available in the top 10 DMAs. We also created Mr. Fancy Nut.
Recipe Aggregator: Since some of the best combos are found in the dustiest corners on the web, we put in this aggregator which gives all the recipes from the web for peanuts + pairing of your choice.
Before the launch of this extension we first went online on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to build a curiosity around this new product. e ridiculousness of this product coupled with the sharing capability of these websites would spread the word soon.
To support the actual launch of Planters Fancy we did print and outdoor in the DMAs where this would be available in stores. ese ads would run in bus shelters, subway trains and billboards. ey would also translate into print ads in magazines. ese ads would run for a limited three month period while the product is in store. e in-shell peanuts in the produce aisle had proven to be a successful move for some of our competitors and we wanted to capitalize on that trend.
Ritz Case/ROI Analysis We compared this campaign to the one Ritz crackers did in 2008 that won them a bronze Effie. ey were facing a similar challenge- iconic brand, lost relevance with today’s audience. eir goal was to reverse declining growth and reawaken the fun of the Ritz brand. eir ‘Open for Fun’ campaign increased revenues by 10%. Applying similar conversions to our campaign and doing an expected value analysis gave a revenue growth of over 1% and a positive ROI.