This is an interesting case study. Smart Ones launched their brand, Smart Made and it sells better than their old brand.
With a clear focus on showcasing the ingredients and putting the dish on the secondary, Smart Made has won awards and is climbing the chart.
In marketing, this might be a case of an A/B Test, which is a test where you launch two or more different products/webpages/anything and you test to see which one has the most reaction. Of course, there is less risk to do an A/B test on a webpage than it is creating a whole new product for it.
So in food, some people will rebrand and perhaps retarget just to prove a concept. With Smart Made, this is a little bit of both. They retargeted their audience to a new type of consumer, one who cares about the ingredients and treated this new brand as a sort of new and hip company. Probably the best example of this is the grocery store industry. In Arizona, the fancy AJ’s Fine Foods also owns the lower tier of the grocery food chain, Food City. Both cater to completely different target markets, but are one of the same.
There are many examples of CPG’s doing this, and more to come. One that comes to mind is Tyson’s Yappah! Where Tyson is launching a totally new brand to cater to a different audience. It happens way more than you think, but it is a great method to test where the market is going, without dumping all the eggs in one basket.
Carrie’s thoughts
While Smart Ones itself was a lower performer in the frozen meal category, SmartMade, by Smart Ones, was in the Top 10 for IRI’s 2017 Pacesetters. What’s the difference? In terms of product, the two meals are pretty similar – there’s a lot of overlap in flavor options and new claims appeal to emotions over details (‘made with real ingredients you can pronounce’). When it comes to messaging, however, SmartMade is uniquely positioned to meet modern demand – especially compared to the more dated Smart Ones imaging. When it comes down to it, SmartMade seems more like a tweaked rebrand than a new brand – succeeding because of a pack and marketing strategy that has adapted to emerging trends. What do you think?
