The relaunch of the Snack brand uses consumers’ imaginations in aggressive advertising | So Good News

Honesty is the best policy, so the saying goes, but what if that honesty extends to creating a marketing strapline on a brand extension of one of your bestselling snack products that tells consumers it’s ‘No Longer Crap?’

A high-risk strategy for sure, but this ‘front and centre’ marketing style is not unusual for our UK snack brand, Pot Noodle.

As a speedy-to-make, store-cupboard favourite of students, its marketing tone of voice matches that of its audience who are as frank and ‘in your face’ with their feedback as you’d expect Gen Z to be.

A brand extension that ‘Dropped the Pot’

“Nielsen’s data shows that noodles are growing fast in the Instant Hot Snack category, at 28% compared to the Pot brand at 9%. And their market share seems to be growing,” says Angus Giddins, brand manager for snacks. .

The rise is not limited to targeting customers aged 16-24, it also includes a growing number of home workers looking for a quick lunch and families looking for tasty, affordable and filling meals. family.

“Pot Noodle consumers want a tasty, quick and easy meal,” explains Angus. “As the largest player in the Instant Hot Snack category, Pot Noodle wanted to support our customers in this space.”

The hidden method receives anonymous responses

The most important USP of the Pot Noodle brand is taste, but when the group launched ‘Lost the Pot’ noodle packs during the Covid pandemic in 2020, the flavor packs were more subtle than their pot counterparts.

“Based on past experiences, we expected people to ‘add stuff’ to the noodles to make them a meal, just like consumers do with competing products,” explains Nutrition Local Jewels Marketing Manager, Lena Portchmouth. “So we launched our blocks with fancy flavors, but in reality, when consumers saw the name ‘Pot Noodle’ they expected a full flavor and they didn’t respond well.”

The customer reviews were not good and their reviews were vague. One simply wrote “Yuck”.

In July 2021, the group decided to return to the board. They also launched in July of this year, a few weeks before the students started going back to primary school.

The new ‘Lost the Pot’ packs have a renewed promise of quality and campaigns are running on social media that not only acknowledges the customer’s feelings – but makes them part of the messaging.

One Twitter post includes a well-crafted customer review along with a request to the Museum of Failure to consider their ‘Lost the Pot V.1’ flavor as a new addition to the Museum.

Why are they texting each other so vaguely?

“It’s true,” says Angus. “We were disappointed that we made a mistake the first time. We know that honesty is well received by our consumers and puts consumers’ minds, it’s refreshing when brands are honest. I think we were too afraid, but honesty is always the best way.

“In addition, we knew that our product is good: 95% of consumers prefer our new chicken food compared to our old brand. And that’s not all. We tested the competition with Ipsos Mori, and our new chicken was preferred against the No.1 seller in the segment ‘ono la block in the blind test.”

The change in taste has seen the group receive five-star reviews on Tesco and Asda websites. The visibility of the ropes has led to the campaign being shown Ad Week and fellow marketers take to LinkedIn to challenge his humor and honesty.

The campaign still has two months to run, but in the first few weeks it reached 6.3 million unique users and 16.1 million views.

“We didn’t just listen to consumer feedback, we took action. And the good news is that it doesn’t just look like shows in the game,” says Angus. “The latest figures from Nielsen show a huge increase in sales of 20% with these new packs.”