Challenger Brand Issue: Raise awareness that Lance peanut butter sandwich crackers were safe to eat and not part of the massive 2009 peanut butter recall.

As the largest U.S. producer of peanut butter sandwich crackers and producer of 100% of its peanut butter, Lance, Inc. was plagued by this nationwide recall, even though its products were not part of the recall. Consumers could not distinguish safe versus recalled products, which ultimately led to a decline in sales for all peanut butter products, including those such as Lance sandwich crackers, which were not part of the recall.

From mid-January through April, GKV worked with Lance to let consumers know through several mediums that Lance sandwich crackers were safe and why.

Insights
Virtually every major national media outlet (and its online counterpart) was regularly reporting about the peanut butter recall and the dozens to hundreds of products added daily. Consumer calls to Lance and supermarket retailers about Lance sandwich crackers exploded. In addition, both Nielsen data and Google Trends data showed that consumer online buzz and searches for information on the peanut butter recall remained high.

Challenger Brand Solution
Over a three-month period, GKV developed and executed a series of integrated tactics to differentiate Lance including media outreach, social media, a microsite and search engine marketing, among others. The media relations efforts achieved 23.3 million earned media impressions – including as two-minute segment on CBS Evening News. To extend the message further, GKV sent cases of product to TV and radio stations to use as a visual to explain that not all peanut butter products were part of the recall.

Results
Lance began to see demand for their products rebound as early as March — even as other peanut butter brands were still being recalled.