Kraft Ads Yet More Zip To Miracle Whip
Stephanie ThompsonAiming to capitalize on the growing popularity of flavored mayonnaise in restaurants, Kraft Foods will begin this October to ship new Roasted Garlic and Zesty Onion varieties of its Miracle Whip in the central U.S. and Roasted Garlic and Roasted Onion varieties under a new Kraft Savory Mayonnaise subline in the South and both coasts.
TV and print ads for the new products will hit in January, building on existing ad campaigns from J. Walter Thompson, Chicago. Multiple FSIs, direct mail and Web advertising also supports.
Though the category has been flat, Kraft has spent heavily against Miracle Whip in recent years, innovating with new plastic squeeze bottle packaging (Brandweek, May 18), returning to national advertising, and significantly increasing expenditures to $24.5 million for January through June of this year, per Competitive Media Reporting. Now, the company is leveraging both sandwich spread brands into the flavored category, which currently has only a few entries from smaller players, such as Land O'Lakes.
"We want to bring news to a category that hasn't had much in recent years," said senior brand manager Tim Calkins.
Sales of Miracle Whip totaled $310.1 million for the year ending Aug. 16 while CPC/Best Foods' Hellmann's brand had sales of 263.3 million and Kraft Mayonnaise totalled $159.1 million, per Information Resources.
COPYRIGHT 1998 BPI Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group