Belvita switches message to taste

Kraft is investing more than £1.5m in a marketing push aimed at promoting the taste of its Belvita breakfast biscuit range as it steps up efforts to ward off fierce competition in the fast-growing category from recent entrants Kellogg’s and Hovis.

Belvita

The company says it wants to set itself apart from rival brands by “playing up” the taste of the different Belvita variants. It will continue to promote the science and nutrition message used in a campaign earlier this year.

Capital presenter Lisa Snowdon returns to front the TV push. The TV campaign will be supported by radio activity featuring nutritionist Fiona Hunter, who will appear in advertorials for the brand in women’s magazines alongside Snowdon later this year.

The company says the decision to return to using celebrities in its advertising was influenced by a need to find “that marriage between science and emotion” in order to achieve cut through with its target audience of 25 to 35-year-old young professionals.

Rahul Gursahani, senior brand manager at Kraft Foods, adds that the latest phase of activity is about using the “association that consumers have between Snowdon and Belvita to get across the point that this is a really tasty product”, which it has not done in previous branding activity.

Additionally, Belvita is launching an outdoor awareness drive next week (17 September) for its Duo Crunch Strawberry and Yoghurt variants , which launched last month.

The brand is now worth £41m in the UK, Kraft claims, up from £27.7m in February. Belvita hopes to build on its performance this year and usurp Go Ahead’s biscuit range to become the top healthy biscuit in the UK before the end of 2013.

The breakfast category is one of the fastest growing food categories, worth about £33m according to industry sources. Earlier this week, Hovis launched a range called Hovis Breakfast Bakes.

Gursahani adds: “You’ve had the likes of Kellogg’s saying that they bring heritage to breakfast. You’ve now got Hovis saying that they bring the heritage of breakfast through bread. In the UK we’ve had three years of very successful growth where we have learnt a lot.

“We know so much more in terms of the consumer when it comes to the barriers that we need to overcome and the triggers we need to exploit.”

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