Hostess Frito-Lay has launched its ‘reinvented’ Hostess potato chip with a high-profile campaign in keeping with the company’s North American celebrity-spokesperson strategy of the last two years.
Matthew Perry, one of the stars of the Friends television comedy series, follows Jason Alexander (Rold Gold) and Chris Elliott (Tostitos) as the latest celebrity to pitch Hostess Frito-Lay products.
Because Hostess is an exclusively Canadian brand, the company wanted a successful, young Canadian as spokesperson for its reformulated potato chips.
BBDO Toronto has created two humorous tv spots starring Perry in addition to a special 60-second version that will be shown once during the Canadian broadcast of The Academy Awards, which Hostess is sponsoring.
The tagline for the advertising is ‘Absolutely unbelievable.’
bbdo’s Quebec partner, PNMD/ Publitel of Montreal, has developed a separate French-language campaign starring Marc Dupre, an up-and-coming Quebec comedian and musician.
Stephen Quinn, director of marketing for Hostess Frito-Lay, says the spokespeople chosen for the new product needed to appeal to a large audience.
‘The Hostess brand is the largest snack brand in Canada. The penetration of potato chips is 97% on an annual basis, this is a brand that has to appeal to everyone,’ says Quinn.
He adds that the heaviest consumption is among teenagers to age 35, ‘the bull’s eye of the target.’
According to Hostess research Matthew Perry has great appeal for a wide range of consumers, especially young people.
Canada’s salty snack market, combining A.C. Nielsen figures with other channels of distribution such as convenience stores, is about $1.5 billion a year.
Potato chips alone account for $900 million of that figure. Hostess Frito-Lay controls one-third of the grocery store market and as much as 60% of channels outside grocery stores.
With that kind of leadership, why reformulate?
Quinn says, ‘Every product we have is significantly superior to our competition.The one exception to that has always been flat potato chips which is the largest segment of salty snacks.’
He says there is still room for growth in the category, particularly for a superior product.
The reformulated Hostess potato chip is thinner, crispier and with fewer defects.
Quinn says the product has also been made much fresher by lowering the best-before date on the package to six rather than nine weeks and removing the oxygen that causes the product to go stale during the packaging process.
In addition to the television campaign, point-of-sale material from Mark IV of Mississauga, Ont. and new packaging from Thomas Pigeon Design of Oakville, Ont. will alert the consumer to the changes in the Hostess product.
Until the end of April, the potato chips are in a special edition package that looks like a newspaper, complete with articles talking about the reformulation.
New graphics will follow but retain the Munchie character.
Hostess’ Ruffles brand ridged potato chip, while not getting the same fanfare as the flat chip, also has new packaging.
Ruffles, the dominant player in the ridged segment, is being flashed as new and improved and it is getting the same freshness treatment as the flat chips.
Quinn says for the next six months Hostess potato chips will also have a much more aggressive price strategy, not through lowering its regular price, but by its frequency of being a featured item.
