Current Events Article: Kraft Spiffs up Old Brands

Current Events Article: Kraft Spiffs up Old Brands

Chris DiBlasi

Tiffin University

The main point of view in the article is Kraft's "stodgy image" (Jargon, 2011) and how it is attempting to relinquish its brand name and spruce up sales. Kraft has seen a decline in sales of about 5% a year for several years (Jargon, 2011) with their miracle whip and macaroni and cheese product lines. In 2007 Nelson Peltz became an active investor in Kraft and wanted them to focus on their "best brands" (Jargon, 2011). Kraft feels that their miracle whip product is still an important brand with annual retail sales of more than $260 million (Jargon, 2011). During the past year, Kraft has went back to the drawing board with intentions of changing their approach on marketing their miracle whip and macaroni and cheese products.

This article is important to marketing management because it shows a long time standing company and how it has implemented a new marketing management scheme to gain back some of the market share it has lost. Kraft has launched a new marketing strategy to boost sales for their miracle whip and macaroni and cheese product lines through different advertising methods. In today's market, you have resources like the internet to help market your products. Kraft has now revamped their marketing strategy to utilize these resources, such as twitter and facebook (Jargon, 2011). Kraft's marketing management has also restructured their brand name from "depicting moms making lunch for kids and dads demonstrating how to dunk Oreo cookies" (Jargon, 2011) to targeting consumers of younger, urban communities.

Current management trends are expressed in the article in that Kraft is now targeting a younger consumer group and "spicing" up their marketing methods. Some of the current marketing trends are incorporating targeting the younger population and using advertising styles that create a little controversy. It seems that most of today's commercials and advertisements gain more attention when it touches on a controversial subject. Kraft's new commercial involves a grandmother being sarcastic to a dad and an unmarried couple. The gist of the commercial is that the grandmother only likes the Athenos brand products (Jargon, 2011). This commercial has gained criticism from the Greek culture and has gained attention on Kraft's facebook page and their twitter page. Kraft has gained attention, and in return has seen an increase in sales.

Kraft has also used their new marketing plan to launch contests on twitter and created a YouTube channel specifically for