Whip it: Bega to focus on brand experiences to attract the young
Bega is embracing brand experiences to target young audiences as it readies to drive growth in the $100m peanut butter category.
Bega is ramping up investment in brand experiences and culturally-led activations as its newest product, Whipped Peanut Butter, accelerates growth for the FMCG giant and unlocks a wave of younger consumers.
The company, which commands a dominant 90 per cent share of Australia’s $100m peanut butter segment, developed Whipped to address a long-running consumption barrier: traditional peanut butter’s sticky, difficult-to-spread texture.
Whipped is a lighter peanut butter with a “fluffy, mousse-like texture” that is being marketed to younger consumers. Unlike regular peanut butter, which is positioned as a spread, Whipped is being positioned as a snack and or ingredient for snacks and treats.
To launch the product, Bega partnered with cult Melbourne bakery Cobb Lane to create a range of custom desserts for a branded pop-up, Cloud Cafe, in Federation Square. The activation targeted consumers through social media and influencer engagement to draw crowds and drive earned-media activity.
Most significantly, it drove sales with Bega’s Nuts Portfolio volume up 2.5 per cent 13 weeks after launching Whipped.
Bega general manager of marketing and innovation Matthew Gray said the move was driven by an ambition to grow the overall category and attract new customers.
“We have positioned it to unlock new usage occasions outside of traditional breakfast,” he said.
“We’re talking to people about how you snack on it or you use it as an ingredient or actually what we’re finding is people are just grabbing a spoon and just having a spoon straight out of the jar, maybe after dinner as a bit of a treat.”
“What’s amazing about it is it’s brought new people into the brand – almost half of the consumers that are buying into Whipped Peanut Butter are new to the Bega Peanut Butter brand.”
Significantly, the product is also driving strong repeat purchasing, with shoppers “coming back into the category to buy another jar roughly 20 per cent faster than the regular peanut butter”.
“It’s brought a younger audience into the Bega Peanut Butter brand,” Mr Gray said. “These consumers will be the main grocery buyers of the future.”
The positioning also leverages the changing consumer diets and habits, with Mr Gray pointing to the nutritional benefits of peanut butter which contains protein, fibre and magnesium.
The activation was a deliberate strategy to stand out and attract the target audience by creating a culturally relevant brand moment. The idea was to tap into cafe culture while driving trial and inspiring people to create their own snacks.
“There’s a lot of clutter in the FMCG marketing space and we wanted to create real impact,” Mr Gray said.
“(The activation) was designed to appeal to a younger audience that are snacking more and wanting that light and airy texture because it goes so well as a snacking format.
“This was absolutely part of the design, but these things don’t always play out as you expect. It’s really nice to see that it has brought in that younger audience.”
The activation attracted 15,000 people and contributed to more than $1m in earned media value through PR and social media, where the brand claims to have reached more than four million people through social sharing and amplification by influencers and customers, in addition to traditional media news channels.
The launch success has influenced how Bega plans to approach research and development and new product innovations, with the business already developing new “snacking-led formats”.
The business plans to invest in culturally-driven experiences to support the new product launches, and it will move spend out of other media channels, however, Mr Gray maintains the business will continue to allocate spend based on the best channels for the product and target audience.
“We will continue to show up and invest in these kind of culturally-led matching initiatives and experiences to bring those newer and younger audiences into the brand,” he said.
“If we’re trying to recruit (younger consumers) into the brand, then, yes, we will switch our investment to ensure that the media channel is aligning to that audience that we’re trying to bring in.
“The media landscape is fragmenting, but for a brand as big as Bega we do need to be appealing to as many people as possible.
“We will communicate and advertise different parts of the portfolio that makes sense for those different media channels.
“It’s not necessarily about walking away completely from one channel or the other, it’s just having an understanding that the landscape is fragmenting and we do need to shift our dollars around to ensure that we are continuing to recruit new users into the brand.”
Mr Gray said attracting new audiences through product innovations was crucial to safeguard the company going forward with Bega possessing five brands that were more than 100 years old.
“Bega Peanut Butter is a 60-year-old brand and it’s a pantry staple – 65 per cent of Australians purchased it in the last year,” he said. “We need to make sure that we’re reinventing our brands and ensuring that we set them up for the next hundred years”
