GoGo squeeZ, the lines of squeezable applesauces and fruit-and-veggies in resealable pouches, continues to expand its marketing, along with its production capacity and sales, in the
U.S.
Last year, the brand ran its first campaign in
national media, including TV spots and magazine ads. Those were timed to help support a day-long event in January, dubbed "Play Day," during which brand ambassadors offered family activities and
product samples in 11 cities. Families around the country were offered coupons for booking their own play dates on a dedicated site.
This year's expanded, $12-million campaign began
with television, print and digital ads that ran through the first quarter. It will continue with a three-month tour spanning about a dozen markets around the country.
The new
campaign, "Goodness on the Go," builds on last year's. This time, the messaging emphasis has been shifted toward the products' benefits as natural, healthy snacks that can go anywhere, whereas last
year's "Awesome Sauce" theme put more stress on the products being fun and delicious (as well as natural) enhancements to active play time.
"Research shows that more than half of
American consumers eat a lot of snacks on the run," but many feel that there are few healthy portable options, says Jeannette Cornell, VP of brand management and communications for GoGo squeeZ. The
brand's own research and feedback in the marketplace confirm that consumers' most-cited reason for buying its products is that they're "all-natural" portable options that "they feel good about giving
the family," she says.
In addition to updating its TV, digital and print creative with the "Goodness on the Go" messaging and running FSI coupons, GoGo squeeZ has been using public
relations and social media "influencers," Cornell reports. This year's print ads ran in Real Simple, Parents, People, Women’s Health and Shape.
The national sampling tour to
increase awareness of the brand's healthy snacking options, running May 15 through Aug. 9, features "GoGo Karts": branded Mini Coopers topped with a helicopter propeller motif that mimics the
product's easy-open cap.
The market stops include New York City, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and
Denver. In addition, there will be visits to Bentonville, Ark., to participate in Wal-Mart's annual associates' fair; to its plant in Traverse City, Mich. (set up in 2011 through a partnership with
Cherry Growers, Inc.); and to Idaho, to visit its second plant, opened last year in Nampa, and the Boise headquarters of the Albertson's grocery chain.
In addition, there will be
three events featuring a novel vending machine, dubbed a "Goodness Machine." Press a button, and the GoGo squeeZ-branded machine, designed by a former NASA engineer, ejects a product pouch into the
air, which glides on a parachute down into the hands of the waiting consumer.
The three Goodness Machine events will take place in highly trafficked venues: New York's
Madison Square Park on July 23; Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., on Aug. 1; and The Grove in L.A. on Aug. 6.
The brand will use its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels to
promote the tour, encouraging fans to spot and take snaps of the GoGo Karts and post them, using #ISpyGoGo, for chances to win prizes and have their photos featured on the brand's site.
The agencies working on this year's campaign include MKG, Match, Horizon Media, Laundry Service and Allison + Partners.
Between its U.S. launch in 2008 and 2012, GoGo
squeeZ helped create and drive the squeezable fruits category, growing to more than $100 million in U.S. sales. The rapidly growing category has inspired an expanding number of competitors, including
J.M. Smucker's Fruit-Fulls, launched last summer.
GoGo squeeZ is owned by a division of France's privately owned Groupe Mom-Materne Mont Blanc, which launched resealable fruit
pouches in Europe in 1998, turning them into a major global business. Materne is projected to realize EBITDA of about 100 million euros in 2015, according to a recent Bloomberg report.