Mondelez readies biggest ever UK push for Belvita

Mondelez International is spending £7.6m on marketing its Belvita breakfast biscuit range in the UK this year, its biggest ever outlay for the brand, in a bid to consolidate its position as the market leader in the fast-growing category.

BelvitaPic
Snacks business to focus on driving sales in convenience store as part of its biggest marketing outlay ever for the brand in the UK.

The move builds on last year’s £6.4m marketing strategy, which saw the brand’s sales value rise by more than two thirds (78 per cent) to £49.4m for the year, with a push into the convenience sector.

Belvita claims the retail channel represents a “new opportunity” to drive sales and is introducing a smaller 150g version of the breakfast biscuit to convenience stores nationwide this month. The launch is being supported by sampling, print adverts and PR activity with nutritionist Fiona Hunter.

Speaking to Marketing Week, Rahul Gursahani, senior brand manager for Belvita, says the product is exploiting a category that “breakfast brands have been slow to move into”.

He adds: “I’m surprised that its taken this long for a brand to look at this part of the market because more breakfast to people in the UK is becoming more about convenience. We know that theres a negative perception around breakfast because people feel it gets in the way of everything else they have to do in the morning.

“We’ve spoken about the convenience of the brand in previous campaigns but the [new variant] takes our positioning to a new channel. We can now capture the attention of shoppers on a top up mission without forcing them to buy extra biscuits.”

Additionally, Mondelez is working on a series of in-store promotions that cross-promote its Belvita range with its Kenco coffee brand after its marketers noticed that people prefer to eat the biscuit with a hot drink. The move will was inspired by its ‘Early Morning Activation’ in-store initiative, which was piloted across Europe last year.

Belvita hopes to build on its performance last year and usurp Go Ahead’s biscuit range to become the top healthy biscuit in the UK before the end of 2013.

The breakfast biscuit is fast becoming a key battleground for food brands looking to exploit new consumption occasions for growth. Last June, Kellogg introduced breakfast biscuits under its Nutri-Grain brand. The cereal manufacturer said at the time that breakfast biscuits had “huge potential” but so far had not won over many UK consumers.

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