Frozen food brand Birds Eye is working on a “comeback plan” for more normal times, including reviewing the brand’s messaging and media mix through the lens of how consumers are reacting to more challenging economic circumstances.

Back at the end of March when the UK lockdown was implemented, the brand created a new and relevant campaign in just 18 days to take full advantage of the media it had already bought for April.

This also saw Birds Eye adjust its marketing plan away from conventional product-based advertising in order to allow the company to catch up with demand as halted some product lines to allow factories to focus on manufacturing higher volumes of core products.

“We stopped promoting for a while,” UK general manager Steve Challouma explained. “We rationalised our range. We cut down the number of products we produced to the real core of the really important products.”

But as the country now prepares to ease out of lockdown and recession takes hold, Birds Eye is looking to not only reappraise the pricing and packaging of its products, it’s also planning to evolve its messaging.

“The kind of messaging that we’ve had in the last month… there’s definitely a shelf life to it,” said Challouma. (For more details, read WARC’s report: How Birds Eye pivoted its marketing during COVID-19 without going dark.)

“If we were to carry on with that, it’ll become a bit tired and less relevant because it’s no longer a surprise for us anymore. [Consumers have] adapted and become accustomed to this new way of being at home,” he added.

Birds Eye has picked up new customers during the COVID-19 period, and seen ‘lighter’ buyers become more regular ones. Keeping these customers is a priority for the brand.

“What we intend to do is really ramp up our media spend in H2 2020, not only because we’ll have not been on air for a couple of months on our equity assets, but also to capitalise on this extra penetration,” Challouma said.

Sourced from WARC