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 OVERVIEW: Gay Lea Spreadable Butter launched in Ontario in 2005, with limited success. The new objective was to re-launch in Ontario, and launch out West.
SITUATION ANALYSIS: There were several challenges: the overall "health" climate was not favourable to butter; Becel has relentlessly attacked butter; Spreadable was almost triple the cost of Becel, and almost double the cost of control label butter; Gay Lea's regular butter franchise was not to be cannibalized; and the media spend was only $1.1 million.
STRATEGY & INSIGHT: Consumers agree that butter beats margarine on taste, and there is a general favorable attitude for natural, less processed foods. Spreadable tastes great and is about as natural a product as there is. So, the strategy was to call less-than-natural margarine into question - with each execution focusing on a single point of communication.
EXECUTION:The campaign used magazine, newspaper, transit, outdoor, cinema and online and was based on four principles:
- Small space, to increase reach and frequency.
- Surprise and humour.
- Specific ads for specific media (e.g.the cinema ad referenced popcorn).
- Placement where people might not expect it. (An ad in the horoscope section said "We see less margarine in your future.")
The campaign launched in January 2007 with four weeks of outdoor and 2 weeks of online and transit. From February until early May, magazine and online maintained presence for as long as the budget would allow.
 Results: In Ontario, dollar volume and share more than doubled for January - June 2007. Out West, the brand generated a share of 0.6%, with steadily increasing dollar volume. These gains also occurred without hurting Gay Lea's regular butter business; in fact, it was up almost 16% over the same period, perhaps because of a halo effect.
Cause and Effect: There were no major changes in retail activities during 2007 and sales results highly correlated with advertising effort. Interestingly, Becel has tried to have the campaign pulled from the market.
GAY LEA FOODS
JOHN SMITH, VP Sales & Marketing
JANIS COBURN, Brand Manager
LIZ MAYNARD, Assistant Brand Manager
JOHN ST.
ANGUS TUCKER, Creative Director
STEPHEN JURISIC, Creative Director
ROB TRICKEY, Art Director
NEIL SHAPIRO, Copywriter
PETER BOLT, Team Leader
MELISSA TOBENSTEIN, Account Director
SANDRA MORETTI, Account Executive
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