Bakery-Fresh
Success.
Challenge
The granola bar category is stagnant and loaded with long-standing, large national brands like Nature Valley, Quaker and Kashi and a bevy of new brands like Kind, Udi’s and Cli.
Sunbelt Granola bars were a brand in decline with spotty, national distribution and a low quality, low price image. Sunbelt was considered generic or “store brand” level.
Our challenge was to help re-position the brand and profitably grow market share.
Strategy
The Johnson Group and Sunbelt’s brand team re-positioned the brand as the fresh-baked taste and no preservatives granola, and featured a risky category paradigm shift:
The only granola bars delivered fresh weekly—like bread or milk.
To highlight this differentiation, Bakery was added to the Sunbelt name.
Results
Sunbelt Bakery is now the number one granola bar in several key markets and commands a retail price higher than Quaker.
In every market where we advertised, market share increased in relation to the advertising.
TV
Sunbelt Bakery: “Arrival”
Sunbelt Bakery: “Truck”
Sunbelt Bakery: “Waiting”
OUTDOOR
NEWSPAPER FSI
IN-STORE DISPLAY
CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA
The Johnson Group created a content marketing plan featuring the Fresh Baked Takes blog.
The blog became the content hub that allowed the brand to capture and own its social
media audiences through their interactions with content customized for and posted on each
social medium.
SOCIAL MEDIA BRAND ADVOCACY
The Johnson Group implemented the unique Bakery Fresh Friends (BFF) brand advocacy program to leverage the reach of thousands of the brand’s loyal customers.
SOCIAL MEDIA BRAND ADVOCACY TRACKING
Tracking Dashboard
The Dashboard drills down into complete details of each post and allows strategic segmentation of the brand advocates.
Cost per thousand reach for brand advocacy is less than that of promoted posts.
Post engagement exceeds the category average by as much as 8 times.
Brand advocacy sharing of posts greatly increases the impressions and they are shares from friends.
Sample of increased reach through brand advocacy
Brand Advocates ROI Profile
Sunbelt Bakery’s BFFs are:
- 6x more valuable than non BFF (.6 boxes/mo vs 3.5 boxes/mo)
- Most loyal purchasers @ 66%
- Represent Millions of dollars in annual purchases
SAMPLE SOCIAL POSTS