The 30-second TV spot opens with rolling clouds against a piercing blue sky and cuts to sunny plains with farmers gathering fresh ingredients like tomatoes and green peppers. It’s not exactly the advertising consumers have come to expect from McCain Foods–a company known for promoting its frozen pizza pockets and French fries with prepubescent boys returning home from an afternoon of skateboarding to a snack prepared by Mom. But it’s representative of what the company calls a “journey” to ensure its frozen foods are made with healthy, natural ingredients that one can find in their own kitchen.
The Florenceville, N.B.-based frozen- food giant began the effort 18 months ago and to date has spent more than $10 million on research and development, and recently launched an ad campaign from its creative agency, Taxi.
When revamping the line, McCain presented consumer groups with a list of ingredients and asked them which ones they liked, which ones they wanted removed from products, and whether or not they knew what the ingredient was. The result: a drastic reduction in the -ates, -ites and –ides included in each package, says Heather Crees, vice-president of marketing at McCain Foods.
“We came up with a list of ingredients we would remove from the product and a lot of them are unfamiliar and unpronounceable,” she says. Keeping certain lengthy ingredients was unavoidable however. To maintain transparency, packaging now includes a description of why that particular ingredient was included, says Crees.
For instance, sodium phosphate can be found in McCain’s potato products to help them retain their natural colour, otherwise they’d be black.
The product revamp was sparked by a TNS study that found 85% of Canadians are looking for prepared foods made with real ingredients they recognize, while 86% want food companies to be more transparent about the ingredients in their products.
Frozen pizza, pizza pockets and potato products are the first to be launched under the new banner, and are available in most stores across Canada.
Ken Wong, associate professor of business and marketing strategy at Queens University says it’s a smart move for McCain considering families and children in particular, are generally the ones consuming McCain products. “There is a growing advocacy of how food products are presented to children,” he says. “When children [are] involved, everything changes.”
The company’s revamp comes during the emergence of several trends, including the rising sensitivity towards environmental sustainability. For the new conscious consumer, it’s not just about buying tastier and healthier food anymore. Nature’s Path Organic Foods, for instance, has married healthy eating with social responsibility by offering organic products that do not use any harmful chemical pesticides or herbicides. The Richmond, B.C.- based, family-owned company produces organic breakfast foods like cereal, toaster pastries, granola bars and frozen waffles.
Maria Emmer- Aanes, director of marketing and communications for Nature’s Path, says consumers are thinking more about their purchasing decisions, which means buying from socially responsible companies and watching what they put in their bodies. “So for those people this cereal presents a step in the right direction,” she says. To increase its name recognition among mainstream customers, Nature’s Path launched a $3-million multi-media campaign in Vancouver, Portland and Boston earlier this year.
Both McCain and Nature’s Path are trying to remind consumers of the old adage, ‘You are what you eat,’ says Wong, which is good, any way you serve it.
