Doing Good First, Doing Good Advertising After: The Kraft Mac & Cheese Success Story

Kraft, like many other large food corporations, is starting to feel the heat from consumers demanding only natural or naturally derived ingredients in food, beverage and even supplement products. In the industry, this has been called the "clean label trend" and while there is no clear definition of what a totally "clean" label is, surveyed consumers told Innova Market Insights that it included "no preservatives (49%), no artificial flavors (47%), no artificial colors (39%) and no artificial sweeteners (35%)."

Consumers have increasingly become more vocal and definitive about their preference for no artificial ingredients or additives. For color additives, much consumer and media outrage over synthetic colors originated from the findings of a study completed by researchers at Southampton University in 2007, which linked the consumption of artificial colors with increased hyperactivity in children.

Kraft is not the only large food manufacturer making the switch to natural ingredients for some of its products - recently, the food giant Mars announced that it would be phasing out artificial colors from its food and drink products over the next five years (yes, that means naturally colored M&Ms!). Kraft and Mars have just recently joined the "no artificial" bandwagon, which also includes similar announcements from Nestle, Hershey and General Mills last year, in 2015.

So if all of these big, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands have promised to change for consumers, why is Kraft the only one making such big waves in the media and with consumers?

With Kraft's It's Changed, But It Hasn't campaign, the marketing team has potentially hit more gold in advertising, public relations (PR) and brand equity than with Velveeta's Liquid Gold Rush campaign in 2015 (also a Kraft brand). It is interesting to note that in the Kraft Heinz merger that finalized in July 2015, Kraft consolidated its creative accounts to four agencies – one of which, CP + B, is responsible for the new campaign.

The strategy behind Kraft's campaign was nothing short of brilliant. Kraft used humor and authenticity (see related article here) to appeal to its target customers, millennials and "clean label" advocates, while also not alienating its brand champions and long-term customers with a different product (think of the Coca Cola disaster of 1985).

In It's Changed, But It Hasn't, Kraft went beyond just understanding their customers’ preference for no artificially derived ingredients – they understood that consumers not just prefer these types of food products, but that they EXPECTED food companies to be doing this in the first place. To underscore their commitment to the original recipe, Kraft released the new, no artificial colors recipe in December 2015, but only added the new labeling (except the ingredients panel, of course) on March 7, 2016, after which they launched their media campaign.

Kraft walked a fine line between upsetting long-term customers (who really weren't interested in a so-called clean label in the first place) and appealing to more "health conscious" consumers (and no, the irony of making a butter and cheese product being "healthier" is not lost on many, including Steven Colbert) who want no artificial colors in their foods and beverages. While many customers currently expect food companies to working towards a "clean label", for big food manufacturers, re-formulating a recipe takes copious amounts of research and development and testing dollars, and not to mention regulatory compliance costs (if any) to analyze the consumption of these products. Kraft's answer to all of these challenges was careful, meticulous, perfectly timed and flawlessly executed. Not only did their campaign show perfectly that the taste of their quintessential recipe had not changed (because you didn't notice) they were also able to do an uninhibited, three month market test of their product to make sure that consumers did not taste any difference. And, hopefully they had a back up media campaign plan if customers rejected the new recipe! 

 Essentially, Kraft's message to their customers is this: we did everything in our power to met all of your expectations. We listened, we changed our recipe, and we did it without you noticing a different product. And now we know that most of our customers don't read the back-of-the-pack nutrition facts labels anyway, or they would have noticed that our ingredients changed! (Which was actually also shown by a study in 2011). It remains to be seen if Kraft will benefit enough from the positive PR this campaign generates to justify reformulating additional classic recipes moving forward; however, if Kraft and other big food companies continue to “do” good things before advertising their good deeds, I think that Kraft could set a precedent for future CPG media campaigns.