In the UK , frozen food is seen as inferior quality, cheap food – a poor relation to chilled or “fresh” food. This deeply held consumer attitude has held the company back in every way: innovation, margins, trade strategy etc. Our task was no less than: to change consumer perceptions of frozen food.
We used our Adcept Methodology to scope the best way to make this fundamental change in consumer perception - with the aim of making consumers see Birds Eye food as quality, natural food with its goodness naturally preserved.
Using Adcepts, we created multiple expressions of what the company could stand for, what it could say about itself and how it could say it. Through qualitative research of the Adcepts, we worked out the most important issues to consumers and identified the compelling things to communicate that were capable of really shifting consumer attitudes.
The first thing to change was the perception that frozen food was ‘full of additives’ – ‘food you can’t trust because you don’t know what’s in it’. This resulted in a major cross-functional programme to renovate the whole company’s range to ensure everything was free from any ‘industrial ingredients’; instead, made only with the type of ingredients you’d find in your kitchen cupboard.
Once completed, we defined the Communications Brief. There were three elements that we identified:
- The first thing to communicate was the ‘free from additives’ message, it was essential to reassure consumers on this before we went onto more exciting and original messages
- Next the benefits of frozen needed to be communicated. We needed to show consumers that freezing food is a natural and great way to keep food fresh; rather than simply a format for cheap, convenient food.
- Consumer views on frozen food are deep seated. We found that Birds Eye needed to be provocative to get consumers to listen and re-appraise their view. Birds Eye needed to demonstrate the quality of their food over ‘fresh’ food which is intuitively thought of as superior.
Click on images to view examples of a previous ad and ones from the resulting TV campaign.
