Ferrara Candy Company acquired Kellogg Co.'s Fruity Snacks as part of a $1.3B deal with plans to give the portfolio a major overhaul. This included reformulated recipes with better-for-you ingredients, fortified with vitamins as well as featuring new, engaging on-pack experiences for kids. But the revamped product also needed a new brand and launch campaign that could break-through the busy snacking space. Our challenge was three-fold:
Create a brand with meaning and growth opportunity versus a logo replacement for Kellogg’s
Develop a brand platform and tagline to express our value proposition and appeal to our target consumer: The Playful Parent
Launch in summer of 2021 with a big campaign moment, driving awareness, consideration and ultimately sales (growing portfolio sales by +7%)
The product itself is inherently fun. With playful shapes, bright fruity colors and games on packaging, we needed a brand that was simple, yet delightful, to complement our snacks. Our naming exploration took us on an adventurous, imagination-filled (and fruit snack-fueled) journey, eventually landing on the name Funables. Our tagline “Have Fun. Eat It Too” is our invitation to play.
In our research, we uncovered that playtime between parents and children has been under threat, according to a global report by Lego. The study found that 17% of children and 32% of parents felt they didn’t have time to play, despite knowing it is fundamental to their own happiness. The pandemic forced many children out of school, and parenting took on new expectations and responsibilities. With the pressure on parents to also be at-home educators, families were preparing for a ‘renaissance of play’ as playtime became interspersed with learning.
To break through with The Playful Parent, we needed to remind adults what it was like to be a kid again. We had to help families see opportunities for fun (aka funportunities) everywhere, so they could learn, play, and make memories with every pack. For the new Funables brand, we needed a creative launch campaign that would help our Playful Parent discover our fruit snacks. With ‘fun’ and ‘sparking play’ at the heart of our brand strategy, we wanted to find the most playful way to tell the Funables story. So, we turned to the real experts of fun — kids.
The Story of Funables launch campaign was an adorable social video series featuring kids telling our new brand story. As they invented and shared their story, we worked with artist Nadia Maneechote (@bypersimmon) to bring the story to life. Nadia’s dreamlike illustrative style was the perfect match for Funables. As the kids narrated their story, Nadia created real-time illustrations, following the crazy twists and turns of their captivating plot. Thanks to the wonderful imagination of our kid cast, the Funables launch story features a mad scientist, unicorns and a number of...aliens.
The Story of Funables made kids the star of the show and authentically highlighted the fresh personality and bright imagination of a new brand within the fruit snacks space. The launch campaign featured a hero 60-second video with social cut-downs featuring our kid cast that lived across organic and paid social channels (Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest) and the new Funables website.
Reach-driving tactics included In-Feed and Stories on Instagram and Facebook as well as Home Feed and Search on Pinterest. These were optimized to build efficient awareness amongst Parents of the new Funables brand name and product enhancements. Pinterest targeting extended into snacking, a popular content area on the channel.
In order to drive further awareness and consideration of the new Funables brand, we recruited the help of 10 parenting influencers – with audiences of 50-100K. The influencers created more than 20 pieces of their own content showing how they sparked play with their kids, making snack time fun.
The rebrand and launch campaign was a huge success, putting Funables in the hands of Playful Parents and their children. We breathed life and personality into an old brand by creating a new one that reflected the product and resonated with the target. Our new product and launch campaign truly broke through with consumers in a cluttered landscape.
Results across the board were outstanding. The Story of Funables campaign garnered more than 345 million impressions across organic, paid and influencer. Our overall awareness goal of 35% for Funables was surpassed (now trending at 43.6%).
Brand Recall was 82% — outperforming the category by +4%. Funables is now in 56.8% of stores (+4.8 ACV) and velocity is up by 111.4% versus last year.
Sales increased by 68.1% from the same time period a year ago — a whole lot more than the 7%+ goal we were tasked with.
