Commentary

Was That A Sweet Message? 'Maybe Not,' Says Sour Patch Translator

 

Wondering what that passive-aggressive email from your co-worker meant? Mondelez International thinks it can help with its commerce innovation called the Sour Patch Kids Translator. Users paste a message into the mobile-friendly site, and the app translates it, letting users “discover the sour behind sweet messages.” The interactive experience is aimed at Gen Z graduates just entering the workforce, who may not have grasped that “I’ll run it up the flagpole” means “That is never happening.”

The app also unlocks rewards on Sour Patch Kids candy, which Mondelez hopes will boost sales at Albertson’s, its retail partner on the effort.

“We're always trying to mine for ways to bring forth the brand purpose and that playful mischief of Sour Patch Kids and to bring that 'sour then sweet' personality across in different relevant ways,” says Anne Martin, Mondelez’s director of shopper marketing. “We saw lots of playful banter on social media of younger users pasting work messages, asking friends to help figure out the deeper meaning, sparking the idea of a plug-in.”

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She tells CPG Insider she expects the translator to appeal to the candy’s broader audience, including previous buyers and parents.

The activation represents new ways the food giant is thinking about using retail media, “from a retailer standpoint, from first-party data to third-party to a social standpoint. It’s a way to engage our audience and drive business growth.”

And it’s doing so in ways that reinforce the brand’s positioning as sour, sweet and fun. “It is tapping into something we are already doing, but in a new, engaging and fun way that will drive users to an offer,” says Martin.

While Mondelez works with many retail media networks, Albertson’s was the ideal partner for this effort. “Albertson’s is open to testing new capabilities or engaging in different ways. It starts with a conversation with the Albertsons Media Collective team, then trickles down to the integration with the category buyers as they weave in all of  data and targeting information,” says Jeremy Ruiz, executive creative director of VML, the agency that worked on the activation. “The team is super collaborative, especially with tech innovations. And they are willing to learn, helping us look for ways to engage people to unlock an offer and drive them to purchase.”

Martin says retail media -- and shopper marketing, more broadly -- is about moving omnichannel activations toward conversion. “We are right there, at the point when they are buying. How can we have fun, break through the clutter, and get the customer to buy our item instead of something else? Creativity is the power to help you stand out and make that narrative different.”

And while boosting sales is the ultimate success metric for activations like the Sour Translator, “we’re also testing how iterations of technology build engagement and traffic. We want to know if we are top of mind for specific audiences,” Martin adds.

Ruiz says such experiments are also core to marketers’ complex relationships with retailers. “It is important to us that the buyer and the retailer be excited to try new things, and having that relationship is massively important. They have to be willing to grow and learn with us, and we have to make sure they continue to be excited to try new things.”

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