Premier Foods to combat own-brands in 10m ad campaign

The marketing push, which unites Premier’s brands under the slogan ‘Great Little Ideas’ is intended to get consumers using its array of brands, such as Bisto, Oxo and Sharwoods in recipes. The activity will include tips and ideas for people in the kitchen.

Dave Brown, UK chairman of design agency The Brand Union, highlighted the importance of packaging in protecting market share.

“Brands need to protect their equity by establishing new codes of design, style and tone of voice that are sufficiently complex, ownable and demonstrate the depth of the brand – whether that’s CSR, innovation or point of difference.

“By making these codes more complex, it becomes much harder for copy-cat products to get a free ride off established brands’ equity,” said

Premier is eager to claw back some of the market share it has lost to supermarket own-brands.

According to a survey by Packaging News owner Haymarket’s Marketing magazine, which was conducted in conjunction with online market research firm Toluna, 67% of consumers said that own-label products were as good as branded ones.

The Marketing survey also found that almost two-thirds of respondents said that they had switched from branded products to own-label to save money and 64% said that should the economy pick up, they would not return to buying branded goods.

Savvy customers
Brown agreed that consumers were migrating to own-brands partly for the sake of their wallets.

“However, another influential factor everyone should be paying attention to is the growing desire by savvy consumers to understand the hidden truth behind what they’re buying beyond the labels – whether a product is healthy and an ethical choice,” he added.

Premier’s campaign, which has been devised by advertising agency MCBD, includes TV advertising and will break in April. Premier is hopeful that the push will continue to bolster up its market share. Last year, when it upped its marketing spend by 11% to £91m, its branded sales rose 6.5% to £1.7bn.

Brown lauded Premier’s approach and noted that other brand owners were taking similar measures:  “It’s almost inevitable that legal copycat packaging battles will continue to flare up this year, but we will also see brands trying new strategies to curb the impact of own brand products on their sales,” he said.

“The Premier Food ‘great ideas’ strategy, which focuses on cooking from scratch, will help create more depth to the brands within the group.”

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