IPA Effectiveness Awards	2002
	Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, 44 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8QS, UK Tel: +44 (0)171 235 7020  Fax: +44 (0)171 245 9904

Maryland Cookies

If you want people to think differently about your brand, you have to think differently yourself

Introduction

Heinz Tomato Soup. Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Robinson's Barley Water. Maryland Cookies. There are some brands that are so familiar, so trusted, so much a part of the furniture, that you've got to work dammed hard to make people see them in a new light. This paper sets out to demonstrate that, by thinking differently about the way we connected with Maryland Cookies' consumers, we managed to make them do just that.

1. Maryland – A Part of the Furniture

Maryland Cookies were launched in the UK, believe it or not, in 1956. It appears that the new baking technology allowing chocolate to be 'built into' the biscuit caused a great deal of excitement – this really was a whole new taste and mouth – feel experience.

The brand continued to be popular down the years, growing to be the 24th largest biscuit brand in the UK, with a sales value of around £10m and more than one in five households claiming to buy them at least once a year (source: TNS).

At the point at which Horizon biscuits (formerly Premier Brands) acquired the brand from Lyons in the early 1990s, it was apparent that Maryland was in danger of becoming marginalised in the consumer's mind. The biscuit market was becoming a rather exciting place to be, with all kinds of new textures, flavours and brand concepts being introduced on a monthly basis, the premium nature of which was supported by quite substantial media spend. Jaffa Cakes and Jammie Dodgers in various new formats, Bahlsen Specialities, Luxury Cookies, Hob Nobs, Heinz Weight Watchers, McVities Boasters, Cadbury's Jestives – not to mention Barbers' 'Batman Forever' – are just some examples.

At the other end of the sector, own-label's share, as elsewhere in the grocery market, had burgeoned, so that by the mid 1990s own-label products enjoyed a sterling share of 35% of the sweet biscuit market (source: Mintel).

Maryland found itself in the classic grocery dilemma. On the one hand, it was unable to compete single-mindedly on price against own-label and other budget brands. On the other hand, it was equally unrealistic to expect the brand to generate the same level of consumer interest enjoyed by the more esoteric market entrants, and hence justify the premium required to generate a competitive level of promotional funds.

Horizon's response to this difficult marketing conundrum had been a series of ad hoc price promotions and BOGOFs. Although the marketing team was aware that this might, in the long term, erode the brand's value, it was difficult to see another way forward. By early 1999, though, it was clear that a more radical strategy was required. That year, company modelling forecasts suggested that the brand's total volume sales for the year could fall by as much as 15-20% if some kind of powerful remedial action were not taken. We knew that if this situation was not addressed immediately, it could become a dangerous downward spiral longer-term.

2. A New Strategy

Horizon's smart response was to focus on new product development (NPD) and, specifically, on a planned launch programme of new yummy variants to complement the traditional 'choc'n nut'. One of the more popular, in consumer research, turned out to be the replacement of chocolate chips with chewy toffee fudge pieces, and the decision was made to focus on this new variant as the spearhead for the marketing programme. So far so good. But immediately, we faced two central challenges:

1. We had a total marketing budget of £390,000. This for a national product launch (the brand's sales profile was fairly flat regionally), in an extremely competitive sector, where other (frankly more interesting) brands would be outspending us big time. In 1998, to take one example, McVities had spent more than £3m on advertising for Jaffa Cakes alone, and several other brands had spent more than a million.
2. In light of the above, we knew that the multiples' embracing of the new variant was by no means assured. The biscuit section of your local supermarket is a busy and congested place; facings are scarce and at a premium. We had to provide a set of tools for the Horizon sales force and, ultimately, compelling reasons for the trade to stock the new product.

Think different

We knew we had to be realistic. We knew that the marketing budget, at face value, was unlikely to secure the levels of distribution and consumer awareness that a successful launch required. We knew, for example, that £390,000 would buy us no more than a decent 6-sheet campaign in London alone. Hardly the stuff to make the Sainsbury's buyer jump up in his seat, or persuade the mother of three in Preston to put Maryland Fudgies on her shopping list.

We had to do something different. We probably had to do something no-one else had done. And we had to be very clear in defining our objectives.

Our objectives

Our objectives were two-fold:

1. Create an excitement around the launch of the new variant that would galvanise the trade. Horizon's sales force were telling us that, above all, they needed something which they could use to capture the imagination of the buyers in the major multiples. The new variant in its own right was not enough, they felt, to guarantee distribution; they needed something much more exciting and persuasive as a sales platform.
2. Generate as much free publicity as possible. If Benetton and FCUK could do it, why couldn't we? In reality, of course, it was not quite that simple – because Maryland is a very different brand from those 'enfants terribles' of the marketing world. Benetton and FCUK are high profile, high fashion items, with pretty funky consumers. Sex and controversy sells – to that market. Maryland, by contrast, was a loveable, family brand with fairly conservative values and consumers. Any activity deliberately designed to provoke and to create a stir would have to be carefully handled to avoid a conflict with those values. The last thing we needed was for Horizon's existing consumers to boycott the brand in disgust!

In other words, our objectives were very simple, but both we and Horizon knew that it would not necessarily be easy to meet them.

The creative response

In addition to our two main objectives, and in line with the very real need for brand consistency, what we were looking for was something relevant to the product – i.e. something which dramatised the new variant's key point of difference – fudgie bits. Because this was a really good product. When you bit into one, the taste sensation was really fudgie.

Unbelieveably fudgie. They really were Unbelieveably Fudgie Objects.

Well, you know the way creative minds work: UFO's. UFO's which, during three weeks in mid September 1999, would 'crash land' in spectacular fashion, all across the nation.

We went to work with two companies which specialise in ambient events – Cunning Stunts (I know, I know) and Diabolical Liberties – to organise the following:

Implementation

1. The showcase: a 40-foot wide Maryland Cookie had apparently crashed into Trafalgar Square. The UFO was promptly cordoned off with plastic tape, marked 'Caution. Unbelievably Fudgie Objects'. The 'accident' tape also carried colour images of the new pack and logo (Figure 1).
2. 35 12-foot wide cookies had, overnight, crashed into various landmarks in 15 cities Blackpool Tower looked particularly spectacular, but all of them helped to stop the traffic (Figure 2).
3. 2000 2-foot wide cookies had rained down on high-traffic streets in the same 15 cities. On average 150 cookies per street. If you were in Charlotte Street, for example, you were not going to miss this (Figure 3).
4. The crash-landed areas were peopled by 'the end is near' walking sandwich boards, with cookies apparently embedded into carriers' backs (Figure 4).
5. A1 posters appeared on walls, fences, and other public spaces featuring giant cookies which had crashed into famous buildings around the world: the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel tower, the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben (Figure 5). Last year this method of distribution would have been called fly-posting; since britart.com we would of course call it artistic commercial use of public space. Either way, the agency's account director, helping to post them in Liverpool's Lime St. Station, was very nearly arrested. To this day, she claims it was 'just a part of the job'.

Sinclair Mason handled the PR. Not a single penny was spent on traditional media.

Results

Trade Sell-In

We achieved our first objective. In the period immediately following the campaign (i.e. post-September 1999) the 'Fudgie' variant achieved just under 65% distribution in the grocery sector. At the time this was the highest level any Maryland variant had achieved, other than the 'choc chip' and 'hazelnut' staples. And this at no apparent cost to the core choc chip product, whose distribution levels were unaffected (Table 1).

TABLE 1 Maryland Cookies Distribution – ACV Weighted, % All Grocers

Gareth Edwards, Sales Director of Horizon Biscuits at the time, acknowledged the effect the 'UFO' campaign had on the sell-in.

'It met the brief. We needed something dramatically different to say to the buyers if we were to convince them that this wasn't just another new line – the 'UFO' campaign helped us to give the sell-in some real drama. And because we lost no distribution for the existing variants, the net result was a much bigger facing for the Maryland brand as a whole.'

A 'hype video' sales tool was used by the Horizon sales force to prolong the impact of the campaign to key individuals in the trade (Figure 6) – another example cited by Edwards of 'merchandising the hell out of the sell-in theme'.

PR coverage

Objective no. 2 was also met. Media coverage of the event was gratifyingly widespread. As well as a one-minute slot on TFI Friday, and similar on the Zoë Ball breakfast show on Radio One, the campaign was featured in the following national media (Table 2).

TABLE 2: MEDIA EVALUATION: NATIONAL

In summary, the campaign achieved over 60 million impacts in national media alone.

The campaign really came into its own, however, at a regional level where it was featured in just about all the main regional and local media in those cities where it ran (Figure 7).

We have been told that it is impossible to track those regional impacts in the same way as the national media; suffice to say that we and Sinclair Mason believe we probably achieved a higher overall level of impacts at regional level, than at national. If that assumption is correct, then the free publicity we generated overall would have resulted in more than 120 million impacts. To achieve that level through traditional press advertising would have cost, we estimate, between £1.4m and £1.8m (at a cost per thousand of between £11 and £15).

Certainly, the press coverage did Cogent's and Horizon Biscuits' own reputation no harm. This is just one example of the coverage we achieved in the marketing press (in this case, Campaign) (Figure 8).

The 'rather deserted parts of the capital', by the way, were Charlotte Street and Buckingham Palace Road. Maybe Eleanor should get out more.

Sales

Ah yes, that. Strangely, despite the single-mindedness of our objectives, the MD and finance director of Horizon were concerned ultimately with commercial payback.

Huge sigh of relief goes here: it worked.

The issue, of course, was not whether we would sell a lot of Special Edition Fudgie Maryland Cookies: but whether total sales of Maryland would be enhanced as a result of the campaign.

A reminder: the campaign ran w/c Sept 6th, for 3 weeks. Table 3 shows the sales results for the 'Fudgies' product.

TABLE 3: MARYLAND 'FUDGIES' VALUE SALES

Other Maryland variants had been launched in the past. None had achieved this level of sales.

The campaign seems to have worked at many different levels. For example, Cathy McGinnis, Brand Manager at the time, tells us that consumer offtake of the new variant in those stores which displayed the 'UFO' POS materials (giant cookies crash landed in your local Sainsbury's……) outstripped that of 'non-merchandised' stores by 400%.

Crucially though, the real success of the campaign was that sales of 'Fudgies' did not appear to cannibalise sales elsewhere in the range: on the contrary, total sales of Maryland Cookies went up over the same period by substantially more that the 'incremental' sales of 'Fudgies' (Table 4).

TABLE 4: TOTAL SALES MARYLAND COOKIES: VALUE SALES

The impact of the campaign, it appears, was to raise the profile of the brand as a whole rather than just the new variant.

Perhaps more tellingly, total sales of Maryland outstripped the rest of its sector (Horizon categorised this as the 'Everyday Biscuit' sector) and all of its key competitors, boosting brand share by nearly 10% (Table 5).

TABLE 5: 'EVERYDAY' BISCUITS – MARKET DYNAMICS

Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of the campaign, however, was the longer-term impetus it appears to have given the brand. The internal effect in the company was to demonstrate the potential reward of moving from a price-promotion to a new product development/added value strategy. Since the 'Fudgies' campaign, Horizon have launched a 'Jammy bits' Maryland Cookies and a 'Toffee Apple' variant – and more delicious variants will follow.

The mid-term sales effect of this new strategy was a steady increase in brand share from the 'Fudgies' campaign through to October 2000, despite a gradual increase in price relative to the competition. As Figure 9 and Figure 10 suggest, brand share increased by some 14% over the 1999-2000 period, while average retail price increased by around 9%.

As you can see, the strength of the brand over the period was such that it overtook its chief rival in the sector – McVities Rich Tea – despite establishing a price premium where it had, traditionally, retailed for less on a lb for lb basis.

End result: one happy client

'We knew that, at some point, we had to break out of the price-promotion strategy – not least because in a sense we were helping to accelerate the move of the whole sector in that direction. So the 'Fudgies' launch really was a watershed for the brand at a time when it looked likely to go into decline. And I'm pleased to say that the net result of that strategy is that the brand has been growing in volume terms since the 'Fudgies' campaign at around 15% a year'
Tony Camp, Marketing Director

3. Summary

Just prior to this campaign, there was a concern that Maryland might be losing its saliency. Other biscuit brands were being launched which, on the face of it, seemed more interesting – and in many cases enjoyed significant advertising budgets. On the other hand, it was difficult for Maryland to compete single-mindedly on price at the own-label/budget end of the market.

The response was to launch a delicious new variant – ' Maryland with Fudgie bits' – and to focus thinking on two pragmatic objectives, namely, forcing grocery distribution and generating as much free publicity as possible.

The 'UFO' campaign which followed was unlike anything ever undertaken by a grocery brand. It resulted in:

• Unprecedented levels of distribution for a new Maryland variant.
• At least 120 million P.R. impacts.
• One-year-on sales increase for the Maryland brand as a whole of some 14%.
• Brand share increase of just under 10%.

…. and demonstrated the commercial effectiveness, in a sector already largely commoditised, of an 'added value' as opposed to price- promoted strategy. Today, the brand is enjoying volume sales growth of around 15% per annum.

http://www.warc.com

© IPA, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, London 2002