Alannah Pawlik, Media Manager, Conagra Brands, rather casually described the company’s consumers as “anybody who has a mouth or a stomach,” which, by its reaction, the audience chucklingly agreed with. She spoke on Wednesday morning at MediaPost’s TV & Insider Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, about Conagra’s evolving strategy.
It is shifting away from its long attachment to TV and commercials that Boomers, especially, remember from the 1960s -- Chef Boy-ar-dee being one great example.
Once a minute-long commercial showing hordes of kids running through the streets demanding the product, Conagra now is out with retro 15-second bits involving Donny Osmond and Little Yachty (seen above), to capitalize on the cultural trend of nostalgia.
“We plan our media buys for maximum reach and then make sure we have the right content," said Pawlik. “With our new personalization mindset, media content and creative are more synced up than they have ever been.”
The company is trying to be as personalized as it can be with its message. Take Healthy Choice, for example. The innovation last year was Power Bowls, she said, with modern attributes like vegetarian bowls. “You may want to eat a Healthy Choice Power Bowl because you’re on a low-carb diet or a weight-loss journey,” she said.
“We personalize the message through different imagery and overlays. We get that through data that we get before media planning. We have an entire go-to-market team. Smart data scientists studying food trends and behaviors.”
Pawlik described Conagra’s “always-on approach,” saying that the brand now subscribes to the practice of reminding consumers of your brand so it’s mentally available while they are shopping.”
One example is Reddi wip, for which Conagra used to run campaigns just around the holidays. “But people can have Reddi wip any day of the year,” she said. ”There are birthdays every day. It’s an example of what’s behind the shift to this, constantly reminding consumers about our brand through distinctive assets.”