Challenger Brand Issue: Overcoming a bias against healthier food alternatives to win new fans for life.

Cape Cod is a 30-year-old consumer packaged goods brand that prides itself on making wonderful products using all-natural ingredients. GKV was tasked with driving consumer trial of Cape Cod’s relatively new reduced-fat chip varieties. The simple but daunting consumer challenge, that research confirmed, was overcoming the preconceived notion that any reduced-fat product will lack flavor when compared to non-reduced-fat varieties. However, this mindset also created an opportunity to prove to consumers how CCPC reduced-fat chips are just as good, if not better, than their non-reduced-fat counterparts.

Insight
Rather than take a traditional soft position of pleading with consumers to please try these chips, we took a more confident message … actually telling people that if you switch out your regular, higher fat chips for Cape Cod Reduced Fat varieties, no one will be the wiser. If people notice anything, it would be a better flavor and heartier crunch. We went so far as to suggest they make a game of secretly switching out the chips they normally serve with Cape Cod Reduced Fat varieties.

Challenger Brand Solution
GKV created a 360° Consumer Acquisition Program that launched during the key consumption period of NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl. The campaign, known as the Big Game Chip Switch (BGCS), encouraged people to switch out regular chips for Cape Cod’s reduced-fat chips through a multi-touch point program that included the following mediums: TV, Paid Media, Public Relations, and Digital & Social Media. In all of these media outlets, consumers were funneled to a campaign microsite that gave them the chance to win a year’s supply of Cape Cod potato chips.

This campaign marked the first time Cape Cod had ever been on TV and the first time they had paid media in the last several years. Cape Cod’s silence in the market had negatively affected consumer brand awareness, which made it even more important for the BGCS to get the most out of every campaign medium. This was achieved through:

• Paid Media Outlets: TV show sponsorships (i.e., Hungry Girl and other shows on The Cooking Channel), banner ads, Search Engine Marketing and an FSI (freestanding insert)
• Public Relations: Outreach to media nationwide based on football teams in playoffs/bowl games, national football media (NFL Network, ESPN), bloggers, top 100 newspapers and national morning television shows, multimedia news release via PR Newswire, matte release via ARA Content, Co-op Satellite Media Tour and e-newsletters
• Interactive Microsite: all mediums surrounding the BGCS were funneled to the site
• Social Media: Facebook was used to reach both types of consumers - those already “fans” of Cape Cod and those who were in Cape Cod’s demographic but not yet fans of the page. Consumers who were already fans of the page were provided details of the giveaway through status updates. Those in the demographic, but not page fans, received targeted Facebook ads.

To measure the performance of the campaign, GKV leveraged the dynamic reporting of Google Analytics*. With the microsite used as the referred base for all campaign pieces, GKV had the ability to track media outlets on a number of levels. This included the outlets that sent the most amount of traffic to the microsite, which outlets had the more qualified leads, geographical data, consumer engagement and contest entry submissions. The depth of Google Analytics allowed a variety of different reports to be evaluated during the campaign, which gave GKV the capability to make adjustments to the campaign on a real-time basis to obtain the best results.

*Google Analytics is a Web analytics solution that provides insights into website traffic and marketing effectiveness.

The Results
Cape Cod Potato Chips achieved great results during its Big Game Chip Switch campaign. Overall, nearly 60 million impressions were delivered - very strong performance considering the length of the campaign and its modest budget. (All impressions and results are during a 37-day campaign.) The PR Added Value equaled a 25 to 1 return on investment. We garnered tens of thousands of unique visitors to the microsite and have gained and maintained thousands of new Facebook fans.

Facebook

Microsite