Specialty Food Magazine

NOV-DEC 2012

Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.

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PROFESSIONAL ASSESSMENT: WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM WALKERS Food and beverage marketing expert Tammy Katz of Katz Marketing Solutions in Columbus, Ohio, evaluates some of Walkers' strategies and discusses ways other companies can strengthen their own brands. Be Product-Quality Fanatics: Walkers has an unwavering commitment to maintaining consistently superior products and commitment to preserving the original product formulation. Its outstanding product quality and taste profiles are dramatically different from its competition, which creates strong brand loyalty. What You Should Do: Make product superiority and consumer appeal your top priorities. Continuously and objectively measure how well your product appeals to consumers. Use quality assurance standards and processes to deliver ideal products every time. Test any potential formulation changes with the consumer first, to make sure that it is at parity with, or superior to, your current formulation. Don't allow short-term product shortcuts or cost savings to slowly kill your brand. Brand Consistently, Refine Constantly: Walkers has built a powerful brand by establishing and maintaining its brand positioning: Scotland's finest shortbread. This is communicated through its red tartan package design and logo, impeccable product quality, selective distribution and premium pricing. The brand has maintained its relevance over time by broadening its product line, new packaging structures, broader geographic distribution and more contemporary marketing. What You Should Do: Develop a clear, compelling and distinct brand positioning and stay true to that promise in everything you do. You should be able to articulate it in fewer than seven words. Let that be the driving force behind your strategy, as well as what you choose not to do. Refine your brand over time to keep it strong and relevant. Rigorously assess what changes you must make with your brand to adapt to and capitalize on shifts in consumer preferences, competition and your market. If you don't, competitors will. Market More Effectively in Fewer Media: Walkers chooses to be conservative in its marketing investments and focuses on doing fewer things well. The company successfully expanded the brand through licensing partnerships, cause-related marketing, public relations and one social media channel. It recognizes the potential for other social media platforms, but has opted to pursue those in the future, when it can do them well. What You Should Do: Do a few things extremely well. Each of your marketing programs must be consistent with your growth strategy and the most effective and efficient option. Ensure that each medium is done at a high-enough level to drive growth and a positive ROI. Do only what you can do well and measure. Don't get sidetracked with tactics that are off-strategy or detract from priority marketing investments. Food and beverage brand marketing expert, Tammy Katz, CEO of Katz Marketing Solutions, has led numerous Fortune 500 and specialty food brands from concept through global expansion. She has launched more than 100 new products with cumulative sales of $2 billion. Katz serves on the board of directors of several food companies and is adjunct instructor of brand management at the Fisher College of Business MBA Program at The Ohio State University. than 250,000 square feet of factory space, where employees make shortbread using the same recipe from more than a century ago with local ingredients—butter and wheat from the U.K.—whenever possible. Strategically Scaled Manufacturing. Shortbread still makes up 75 percent of Walkers' products (with Stem Ginger Cookies as its second best seller), and the company is careful not to change the manu- facturing method too much. "With our newer bakeries in Elgin, it's like you're scaling up the method you'd use in your home kitchen," says Steve Dawson, president and CEO of Walkers' U.S. divi- sion, Walkers Shortbread Inc., of how the company maintains artisanal quality. "Instead of mixing in bigger batches, we add more mixing machines. We use the same ingredients and same quantities. And the level of attention is the same." "There are people touching, tasting, looking at conditions [such as humid- ity]. The mixture is fed by hand into the machines that put batter into the trays," Dawson explains. "We have people doing things that perhaps machines could do." But, says Dawson, the Walkers believe the human factor and the location makes all the difference in their product. "Walker short- bread could not be made anywhere else. We'd lose our soul, and customers would notice. People don't have to worry that we will put in less butter or less quality butter. That would kill our brand." At Walkers, consistency doesn't end at the product itself. "We've expanded cau- tiously and will continue to do so," says Dawson of the growth from local to inter- national. Sustainability is stressed in part- nerships, as well. New York's Zabar's has been selling Walkers since it came to the U.S. three decades ago. "We think in terms of generations, not quarters." Carefully Managed Expansion. In 1995 Walkers bought Europa Foods, the U.S.- based company that had been distribut- ing its products, which became Walkers Shortbread Inc. "They did a good job sell- ing our product. It was 80 percent of their business when Walkers purchased it," says Walker. "It was a wise move to purchase and NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012 59

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