BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Havarti usage is on the rise as more consumers discover its likability, meltability and creaminess. Dofino®, made in Wisconsin and owned by Arla, a Danish cheese company, is America’s #1 Havarti, but it faces strong competition from established brands.  To increase usage and escape the ‘gourmet ghetto’ of the specialty cheese case, Dofino® is introducing Havarti slices in select markets.  San Francisco was chosen as the marketing focus because Safeway is supporting the product and the broker network is strong.

 

DESCRIPTION

TARGET AUDIENCE

Female 35-54, San Francisco Metro area

Increase awareness and trial of the Dofino® brand in the San Francisco Metro Area

 

Increase sales of Dofino® Havarti Sliced Cheese in the San Francisco Metro area

 

OBJECTIVES

METHODS & STRATEGIES

We ran seven campaigns across multiple channels for a combined 2.5 million impressions in the San Francisco market. Each was demographically targeted to women 35-54 in the San Francisco metro area. The messaging was consistent across all initiatives: highlight the brand as category leader when compared to other havarti cheese brands and simultaneously introduce the new sliced cheese format.

The key to successful regional campaigns is to take a deep dive into the market’s unique strengths.

 

San Francisco’s lively street festivals offer a way to sample, engage consumers, collect data, and seed brand awareness.  We created custom presentations and hosted the events which allowed us to witness first-hand the impact of brand awareness campaigns.  We also collected email data to deepen consumer engagement post-event.

 

For Paid media our sales-support strategy coordinated with in-store promotions and product flow-in.  We flighted a front-end introductory push and a mid-point promo bump using a lifestyle television show segment featuring San Francisco’s own Top Chef Elizabeth Falkner.  She created a recipe with Dofino®, which was also photographed and posted online.  :30 commercials edited from the show segment ran on TV and taxis.

 

Pandora and a Banner ad campaign garnered healthy click-through

to Falkner’s recipe.  Both campaigns were geo-targeted within a 5-mile radius of Safeway stores carrying the product.

 

In addition to event and recipe support, we broadened the messaging for Earned media by engaging a consulting chef to gain specific insights into San Francisco’s food interests, using those to inspire the daily social media community communications.  Sampling event coverage supplemented the postings.

 

Owned media then picked up the ball, with mobile content featuring each event to drive sampling traffic and increase brand awareness.  Hypermarket blogs tied our cheese to the market trends, covering SF’s best grilled cheese, best farmer’s market, etc.

 

RESULTS

Based on the IRI data through Q1 2013, Dofino is up 53.7% in San Francisco in sales over 2012 since our 2013 initiatives began versus being up 10.6% nationally 2012 in the same period.

 

By comparison, the dofinousa.com website had 4,436 visits in Q4 of 2012, The 14,924 visits in Q1 represent a 236% increase over the previous quarter. A comparable time frame without promotional activity from Q1 2012 showed 4,855 visits.

 

In the graphic below, Google Analytics shows that over 90% of the incoming web traffic from California is directly related to our tagged campaign IDs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The graph below shows weekly Google natural search for branded and product specific search phrases from the region. It shows how consumer awareness of the Dofino brand name and product types has increased.

 

The sliced emphasis is working. The visitors from CA mostly visited our destination page promoting the Dofino recipes using slices. But they also ventured to the home page and visited the general recipes section