Maryland Cookies (2024)

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	IPA Effectiveness Awards	2002
	Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, 44 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8QS, UK Tel: +44 (0)171 235 7020Fax: +44 (0)171 245 9904

Ifyou want people to thinkdifferently about yourbrand, you have to thinkdifferently yourself

Introduction

HeinzTomato Soup. Kellogg'sCorn Flakes. Robinson'sBarley Water. MarylandCookies. There are somebrands that are sofamiliar, so trusted, somuch a part of thefurniture, that you'vegot to work dammed hardto make people see themin a new light. Thispaper sets out todemonstrate that, bythinking differentlyabout the way weconnected with MarylandCookies' consumers, wemanaged to make them dojust that.

1.Maryland – A Part ofthe Furniture

MarylandCookies were launched inthe UK, believe it ornot, in 1956. It appearsthat the new bakingtechnology allowingchocolate to be 'builtinto' the biscuit causeda great deal ofexcitement – thisreally was a whole newtaste and mouth – feelexperience.

Thebrand continued to bepopular down the years,growing to be the 24thlargest biscuit brand inthe UK, with a salesvalue of around £10m andmore than one in fivehouseholds claiming tobuy them at least once ayear (source: TNS).

Atthe point at whichHorizon biscuits(formerly Premier Brands)acquired the brand fromLyons in the early 1990s,it was apparent thatMaryland was in danger ofbecoming marginalised inthe consumer's mind. Thebiscuit market wasbecoming a ratherexciting place to be,with all kinds of newtextures, flavours andbrand concepts beingintroduced on a monthlybasis, the premium natureof which was supported byquite substantial mediaspend. Jaffa Cakes andJammie Dodgers in variousnew formats, BahlsenSpecialities, LuxuryCookies, Hob Nobs, HeinzWeight Watchers, McVitiesBoasters, Cadbury'sJestives – not tomention Barbers' 'BatmanForever' – are justsome examples.

Atthe other end of thesector, own-label'sshare, as elsewhere inthe grocery market, hadburgeoned, so that by themid 1990s own-labelproducts enjoyed asterling share of 35% ofthe sweet biscuit market(source: Mintel).

Marylandfound itself in theclassic grocery dilemma.On the one hand, it wasunable to competesingle-mindedly on priceagainst own-label andother budget brands. Onthe other hand, it wasequally unrealistic toexpect the brand togenerate the same levelof consumer interestenjoyed by the moreesoteric market entrants,and hence justify thepremium required togenerate a competitivelevel of promotionalfunds.

Horizon'sresponse to thisdifficult marketingconundrum had been aseries of ad hoc pricepromotions and BOGOFs.Although the marketingteam was aware that thismight, in the long term,erode the brand's value,it was difficult to seeanother way forward. Byearly 1999, though, itwas clear that a moreradical strategy wasrequired. That year,company modellingforecasts suggested thatthe brand's total volumesales for the year couldfall by as much as 15-20%if some kind of powerfulremedial action were nottaken. We knew that ifthis situation was notaddressed immediately, itcould become a dangerousdownward spirallonger-term.

2.A New Strategy

Horizon'ssmart response was tofocus on new productdevelopment (NPD) and,specifically, on aplanned launch programmeof new yummy variants tocomplement thetraditional 'choc'n nut'.One of the more popular,in consumer research,turned out to be thereplacement of chocolatechips with chewy toffeefudge pieces, and thedecision was made tofocus on this new variantas the spearhead for themarketing programme. Sofar so good. Butimmediately, we faced twocentral challenges:

1. We had a total marketing budget of £390,000. This for a national product launch (the brand's sales profile was fairly flat regionally), in an extremely competitive sector, where other (frankly more interesting) brands would be outspending us big time. In 1998, to take one example, McVities had spent more than £3m on advertising for Jaffa Cakes alone, and several other brands had spent more than a million.
2. In light of the above, we knew that the multiples' embracing of the new variant was by no means assured. The biscuit section of your local supermarket is a busy and congested place; facings are scarce and at a premium. We had to provide a set of tools for the Horizon sales force and, ultimately, compelling reasons for the trade to stock the new product.

Thinkdifferent

Weknew we had to berealistic. We knew thatthe marketing budget, atface value, was unlikelyto secure the levels ofdistribution and consumerawareness that asuccessful launchrequired. We knew, forexample, that £390,000would buy us no more thana decent 6-sheet campaignin London alone. Hardlythe stuff to make theSainsbury's buyer jump upin his seat, or persuadethe mother of three inPreston to put MarylandFudgies on her shoppinglist.

Wehad to do somethingdifferent. We probablyhad to do somethingno-one else had done. Andwe had to be very clearin defining ourobjectives.

Ourobjectives

Ourobjectives were two-fold:

1. Create an excitement around the launch of the new variant that would galvanise the trade. Horizon's sales force were telling us that, above all, they needed something which they could use to capture the imagination of the buyers in the major multiples. The new variant in its own right was not enough, they felt, to guarantee distribution; they needed something much more exciting and persuasive as a sales platform.
2. Generate as much free publicity as possible. If Benetton and f*ck could do it, why couldn't we? In reality, of course, it was not quite that simple – because Maryland is a very different brand from those 'enfants terribles' of the marketing world. Benetton and f*ck are high profile, high fashion items, with pretty funky consumers. Sex and controversy sells – to that market. Maryland, by contrast, was a loveable, family brand with fairly conservative values and consumers. Any activity deliberately designed to provoke and to create a stir would have to be carefully handled to avoid a conflict with those values. The last thing we needed was for Horizon's existing consumers to boycott the brand in disgust!

Inother words, ourobjectives were verysimple, but both we andHorizon knew that itwould not necessarily beeasy to meet them.

Thecreative response

Inaddition to our two mainobjectives, and in linewith the very real needfor brand consistency,what we were looking forwas something relevant tothe product – i.e.something whichdramatised the newvariant's key point ofdifference – fudgiebits. Because this was areally good product. Whenyou bit into one, thetaste sensation wasreally fudgie.

Unbelieveably fudgie. They really were Unbelieveably Fudgie Objects.

Well,you know the way creativeminds work: UFO's. UFO'swhich, during three weeksin mid September 1999,would 'crash land' inspectacular fashion, allacross the nation.

Wewent to work with twocompanies whichspecialise in ambientevents – Cunning Stunts(I know, I know) andDiabolical Liberties –to organise thefollowing:

Implementation

1. The showcase: a 40-foot wide Maryland Cookie had apparently crashed into Trafalgar Square. The UFO was promptly cordoned off with plastic tape, marked 'Caution. Unbelievably Fudgie Objects'. The 'accident' tape also carried colour images of the new pack and logo (Figure 1).
2. 35 12-foot wide cookies had, overnight, crashed into various landmarks in 15 cities Blackpool Tower looked particularly spectacular, but all of them helped to stop the traffic (Figure 2).
3. 2000 2-foot wide cookies had rained down on high-traffic streets in the same 15 cities. On average 150 cookies per street. If you were in Charlotte Street, for example, you were not going to miss this (Figure 3).
4. The crash-landed areas were peopled by 'the end is near' walking sandwich boards, with cookies apparently embedded into carriers' backs (Figure 4).
5. A1 posters appeared on walls, fences, and other public spaces featuring giant cookies which had crashed into famous buildings around the world: the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel tower, the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben (Figure 5). Last year this method of distribution would have been called fly-posting; since britart.com we would of course call it artistic commercial use of public space. Either way, the agency's account director, helping to post them in Liverpool's Lime St. Station, was very nearly arrested. To this day, she claims it was 'just a part of the job'.

SinclairMason handled the PR. Nota single penny was spenton traditional media.

Results

TradeSell-In

Weachieved our firstobjective. In the periodimmediately following thecampaign (i.e.post-September 1999) the 'Fudgie'variant achieved justunder 65% distribution inthe grocery sector. Atthe time this was thehighest level anyMaryland variant hadachieved, other than the 'chocchip' and 'hazelnut'staples. And this at noapparent cost to the corechoc chip product, whosedistribution levels wereunaffected (Table 1).

TABLE1 Maryland CookiesDistribution – ACVWeighted, % All Grocers

GarethEdwards, Sales Directorof Horizon Biscuits atthe time, acknowledgedthe effect the 'UFO'campaign had on thesell-in.

'It met the brief. We needed something dramatically different to say to the buyers if we were to convince them that this wasn't just another new line – the 'UFO' campaign helped us to give the sell-in some real drama. And because we lost no distribution for the existing variants, the net result was a much bigger facing for the Maryland brand as a whole.'

A'hype video' sales toolwas used by the Horizonsales force to prolongthe impact of thecampaign to keyindividuals in the trade(Figure6) – anotherexample cited by Edwardsof 'merchandising thehell out of the sell-intheme'.

PRcoverage

Objectiveno. 2 was also met. Mediacoverage of the event wasgratifyingly widespread.As well as a one-minuteslot on TFI Friday, andsimilar on the Zoë Ballbreakfast show on RadioOne, the campaign wasfeatured in the followingnational media (Table 2).

TABLE2: MEDIA EVALUATION:NATIONAL

Insummary, the campaignachieved over 60 millionimpacts in national mediaalone.

Thecampaign really came intoits own, however, at aregional level where itwas featured in justabout all the mainregional and local mediain those cities where itran (Figure7).

Wehave been told that it isimpossible to track thoseregional impacts in thesame way as the nationalmedia; suffice to saythat we and SinclairMason believe we probablyachieved a higher overalllevel of impacts atregional level, than atnational. If thatassumption is correct,then the free publicitywe generated overallwould have resulted inmore than 120 millionimpacts. To achieve thatlevel through traditionalpress advertising wouldhave cost, we estimate,between £1.4m and £1.8m(at a cost per thousandof between £11 and£15).

Certainly,the press coverage didCogent's and HorizonBiscuits' own reputationno harm. This is just oneexample of the coveragewe achieved in themarketing press (in thiscase, Campaign) (Figure8).

The'rather deserted parts ofthe capital', by the way,were Charlotte Street andBuckingham Palace Road.Maybe Eleanor should getout more.

Sales

Ahyes, that. Strangely,despite thesingle-mindedness of ourobjectives, the MD andfinance director ofHorizon were concernedultimately withcommercial payback.

Hugesigh of relief goes here:it worked.

Theissue, of course, was notwhether we would sell alot of Special EditionFudgie Maryland Cookies:but whether total salesof Maryland would beenhanced as a result ofthe campaign.

Areminder: the campaignran w/c Sept 6th, for 3weeks. Table 3 shows thesales results for the 'Fudgies'product.

TABLE3: MARYLAND 'FUDGIES'VALUE SALES

OtherMaryland variants hadbeen launched in thepast. None had achievedthis level of sales.

Thecampaign seems to haveworked at many differentlevels. For example,Cathy McGinnis, BrandManager at the time,tells us that consumerofftake of the newvariant in those storeswhich displayed the 'UFO'POS materials (giantcookies crash landed inyour local Sainsbury's……)outstripped that of 'non-merchandised'stores by 400%.

Cruciallythough, the real successof the campaign was thatsales of 'Fudgies' didnot appear to cannibalisesales elsewhere in therange: on the contrary,total sales of MarylandCookies went up over thesame period bysubstantially more thatthe 'incremental' salesof 'Fudgies' (Table 4).

TABLE4: TOTAL SALES MARYLANDCOOKIES: VALUE SALES

Theimpact of the campaign,it appears, was to raisethe profile of the brandas a whole rather thanjust the new variant.

Perhapsmore tellingly, totalsales of Marylandoutstripped the rest ofits sector (Horizoncategorised this as the 'EverydayBiscuit' sector) and allof its key competitors,boosting brand share bynearly 10% (Table 5).

TABLE5: 'EVERYDAY' BISCUITS– MARKET DYNAMICS

Perhapsthe most gratifyingaspect of the campaign,however, was thelonger-term impetus itappears to have given thebrand. The internaleffect in the company wasto demonstrate thepotential reward ofmoving from aprice-promotion to a newproduct development/addedvalue strategy. Since the'Fudgies' campaign,Horizon have launched a 'Jammybits' Maryland Cookiesand a 'Toffee Apple'variant – and moredelicious variants willfollow.

Themid-term sales effect ofthis new strategy was asteady increase in brandshare from the 'Fudgies'campaign through toOctober 2000, despite agradual increase in pricerelative to thecompetition. As Figure9 and Figure10 suggest, brandshare increased by some14% over the 1999-2000period, while averageretail price increased byaround 9%.

Asyou can see, the strengthof the brand over theperiod was such that itovertook its chief rivalin the sector –McVities Rich Tea –despite establishing aprice premium where ithad, traditionally,retailed for less on a lbfor lb basis.

Endresult: one happy client

'We knew that, at some point, we had to break out of the price-promotion strategy – not least because in a sense we were helping to accelerate the move of the whole sector in that direction. So the 'Fudgies' launch really was a watershed for the brand at a time when it looked likely to go into decline. And I'm pleased to say that the net result of that strategy is that the brand has been growing in volume terms since the 'Fudgies' campaign at around 15% a year'
Tony Camp, Marketing Director

3.Summary

Justprior to this campaign,there was a concern thatMaryland might be losingits saliency. Otherbiscuit brands were beinglaunched which, on theface of it, seemed moreinteresting – and inmany cases enjoyedsignificant advertisingbudgets. On the otherhand, it was difficultfor Maryland to competesingle-mindedly on priceat the own-label/budgetend of the market.

Theresponse was to launch adelicious new variant –' Maryland with Fudgiebits' – and to focusthinking on two pragmaticobjectives, namely,forcing grocerydistribution andgenerating as much freepublicity as possible.

The'UFO' campaign whichfollowed was unlikeanything ever undertakenby a grocery brand. Itresulted in:

• Unprecedented levels of distribution for a new Maryland variant.
• At least 120 million P.R. impacts.
• One-year-on sales increase for the Maryland brand as a whole of some 14%.
• Brand share increase of just under 10%.

….and demonstrated thecommercial effectiveness,in a sector alreadylargely commoditised, ofan 'added value' asopposed to price-promoted strategy. Today,the brand is enjoyingvolume sales growth ofaround 15% per annum.

http://www.warc.com

© IPA, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, London 2002