Real Case Stories

What do you see in the image above? Is it a diamond? Is it a rhombus? Or is it a square, rotated  45°? In 2008, Kraft Foods Canada capitalized on this confusion to revitalize a 78-year-old brand, Shreddies. Sales of this popular breakfast cereal had stagnated. According to a consumer research done in its Canadian market, customers wanted the brand to refresh itself without it changing anything.  How to increase sales of a product that is loved by its customers just the way it is? Kraft Foods accepted the challenge and launched the new & improved Shreddie, the 'Diamond Shreddies'. Hunter Somerville's idea, an intern with Kraft Food's creative agency Ogilvy & Mather Canada, became the basis of this campaign - an 'angular upgrade' to the original Shreddie, devised by a team of 'cereal scientists'.  Diamond Shreddies: Original Square Shreddie rotated 45° Packs of 'Diamond Shreddies' was launched with much fanfare. The ...

M&M's are part of the main operational food ration for the US Armed Forces. The candies have been part of NASA's every space shuttle mission since Columbia 1981 and are also on the International Space Station menu. Do you know why? Because the candy "melts in your mouth--not in your hand!"  In 1932, confectioner Forrest Mars Sr. moved to England and began manufacturing the Mars bar for troops in the United Kingdom. He  was looking to solve a key consumer problem of the time before air-conditioning: chocolate bars melted in the heat, so Americans stopped buying them.  During the Spanish Civil War , he  saw soldiers eating the British made  Smarties , a color-varied sugar-coated   chocolate   confect ionery , as part of their rations. Mars was thrilled by the unique construct of these candies and knew it to be the perfect solution to the sales slump that hit the family business every summer.  He returned to the Un...

Content marketing began long before the internet.  Radio was an early adopter of content marketing. And one of the most prominent examples of this type of advertising is the  soap opera . In fact, content marketing led to the creation of the monicker "soap" opera.  In the golden age of radio, advertisers sponsored entire programs, usually with some sort of message like "We thank our sponsors for making this program possible", airing at the beginning or end of a program. One of the most successful examples of such advertising is  Oxydol's Own Ma Perkins - In 1933,  P&G chose it's brand Oxydol to sponsor its first radio serial, Ma Perkins .   The fifteen minute show ran five days a week and mentioned Oxydol's name twenty to twenty-five times during each episode. P&G received 5,000 letters complaining about Ma Perkins within the first week. But by the end of the first year, sales had doubled. In fact, t his commitment is regard...