Del Monte Aims for Shoppers' Lunchboxes

San Francisco — Del Monte Foods teamed with Walmart last summer on a back-to-school program that the manufacturer hoped would make its brand top-of-mind with moms packing lunches for their children’s first days of the new school year. “Families with kids are basically our core business, whether it’s in a lunchbox or around the dinner table,” says Mike Malony, Del Monte senior manager of shopper marketing. “We wanted to own the first day of school in the minds of moms, from what the lunch would be like to ‘How much will my kid know that she’s loved when she gets there?’”Packing a healthy lunch and getting a back-to-school picture were seen as natural expressions of this idea. “Moms and dads are really anxious to get more fruits and vegetables into their kids’ eating habits,” says Malony.To help moms show their kids that they care, the partners offered $1 manufacturer’s coupons for Del Monte’s FruitBurst Squeezer and plastic fruit cup products via tearpads. The take-ones also promoted a Del Monte-sponsored offer for a free 5-by-7-inch print at Walmart Photo Center, with no purchase required.To get shoppers to the store, the partners used a co-op FSI in most Walmart markets as well as Del Monte’s social media pages and blogger activity. These mentions included the $1 and free print coupons as well as messaging about showing love by packing your kids a healthy lunch. A direct mailing from the Walmart Vision Center also sent the coupons to another 1 million targeted households.The bigger focus was in-store, however, since Walmart already had extensive marketing in place to attract back-to-school shoppers. Del Monte negotiated with the retailer to have its products on display in the earliest back-to-school timeframe. “We were willing to surrender some shelf space after school started so that we could be there right around when school was starting,” Malony says.From mid-July to mid-August, endcaps and palette displays with tearpads were in at least 2,000 Walmart Supercenters nationwide. The tearpads were also positioned at-shelf.Del Monte collaborated extensively with other Walmart service departments to highlight the program throughout August. The coupons were featured on the cover of 5 million “cash wallets” distributed with currency to Walmart Money Center customers. An additional 2 million inserts including the same coupon were distributed in photo envelopes to Walmart Photo Center customers. These in-store elements executed with the Walmart service departments lasted through the month of August.“Walmart’s Photo Center and Money Center are both interested in attracting new clients, particularly the Photo Center,” says Malony. “So we took a great deal of time to find out what we could do to partner with them so that their services could also be promoted while we were promoting our lunchbox solutions.”The program represents Del Monte’s second-biggest investment of the year with Walmart. The largest occurs during the holiday season, when the manufacturer promotes perennial holiday favorites like green bean and corn casseroles.Del Monte will judge the success of the campaign on various criteria including coupon redemption and Nielsen share data. According to Malony, preliminary results indicated a share gain during the program timeframe for Del Monte’s plastic fruit cups. Since it was Del Monte’s first collaboration with Walmart’s service departments, the program also produced results in terms of relationship-building. “We want to deepen our collaboration with Walmart, both with our buyer and with these service departments, so that Del Monte means more to the Walmart shopper than just a can of fruits or vegetables in the aisle,” Malony says.Del Monte worked with Pollinate Media Group, Costa Mesa, California, on the blogger element of the campaign; Closure Media, Rogers, Arkansas, on the Photo Center and Money Center inserts; Cox Target Media, Los Angeles, on the Vision Center mailing; and with the Chicago office of its agency of record, Saatchi & Saatchi X, on the creative elements.

Del Monte Aims for Shoppers' Lunchboxes

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI

Related Images

Business Topic

Company

Market Segment