Special K Repositions Itself at Kroger Chains

Battle Creek, Mich. — To recapture lost households and win back share and sales, Kellogg Co. partnered with Cincinnati-based Kroger in 2015 for a yearlong Special K campaign. It was the first time the two had worked together on a program of this scale and was one of the largest custom programs the brand has done for the retailer.While consumers’ mindsets had shifted from weight loss to nutrition, Special K’s marketing and food hadn’t evolved. The two-week Special K diet touting that participants could lose a dress size no longer resonated with shoppers. “They wanted to eat good food that tasted good and fueled their bodies,” says Jen Carter, director of shopper marketing for Kellogg’s Kroger team. A repositioning from a “diet food to a wellness enabler” was needed.Jointly, Kellogg and Kroger decided that focusing on Special K’s ready-to-eat cereal and bars would make the largest impact with snacks and frozen seeing a possible halo effect. New products included cinnamon crunch cereal and chewy nut bars. More berries were added to the Special K red berries cereal, different combinations were unveiled in frozen items, and new technology brought better flavor and texture to Special K cracker chips. “The brand took the feedback from consumers very seriously,” Carter says. “All brands on Special K were rethinking flavor and taste over communicating ‘low calories and diets.’”The campaign specifically targeted shoppers who were loyal to Kroger but were either declining or lapsing from Special K cereal and bar brands. Cincinnati-based agency 84.51°, a Kroger subsidiary, analyzed the retailer’s loyalty card data to build a campaign audience based on longitudinal purchasing behavior. “The granularity of data also enabled us to further segment our audience into sub-targets and deliver tailored messages to each,” adds Lisa Allison, senior marketing coordinator, Kroger.Out-of-store elements included direct mail, email, a dedicated landing page on Kroger.com, digital load-to-card coupons, paid digital media and a BzzAgent word-of-mouth campaign. All were co-branded and carried the tagline, “Your Journey. Your Way.”In stores, the campaign utilized sampling, displays and a custom loyalty program via Catalina. Shopper marketing support ran year-round with a special push from early July through October that included an exclusive shopper rewards program.During the time frame, Kroger shoppers who purchased any five Special K items – and used their loyalty cards – received coupons at checkout via Catalina. Codes on the coupons – the offer was cumulative encouraging additional purchases – could be redeemed via YourJourneyYourWay.com for rewards such as resistance bands, exercise balls, yoga mats, gym bags and free Special K cereal. In addition to details on the program and the redemption link, the landing page also included access to digital coupons to further drive purchase.Near the end of the campaign, an email was sent to those shoppers who had engaged with the brand “to remind them to redeem their rewards and stimulate incremental purchases to meet reward redemption hurdles,” says Carter. “This proved highly successful.”The several-million-dollar program aimed to reach 3.2 million households with 32 million impressions. Expectations were exceeded with more than 5 million unique households reached, 36 million impressions and $4.5 million in incremental sales.“The most exciting aspect of this holistic approach to reversing a declining trend was the collaboration between our supplier partner team at Kellogg’s, the merchandising team here at Kroger, the 84.51° team and the Kroger marketing team,” says Natalie Ream, VP, customer communications & marketing, Kroger. “Each brought their unique expertise, focused around a clearly defined objective. The results demonstrated the power of data, insights, targeting across multiple channels and a relevant message can drive engagement and sales.” The partners worked closely together throughout the program, Carter says, and a tracker was provided weekly for Kroger and Kellogg senior leadership. Both brand and retailer say they will use what they learned from this program as they execute future campaigns. “The results and learnings,” says Carter, “are allowing us to replicate this program on other brands and from year to year with efficiencies so the long-term payoff has an even better ROI.”

Special K Repositions Itself at Kroger Chains

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