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Cadbury and Mars push to boost chocolate sales in slow summer months
Cadbury and Mars are looking to generate demand around traditionally slow summer months with activity created to encourage consumers to purchase chocolate on different occasions.
Chocolate marketers have previously dialed down their activities between April and August because of the warm weather and lack of festive occasions. Increased competition and the growing number of consumers staying at home in the evenings to save money, has pushed brands to look to new ways to target shoppers.
For Cadbury, this trend has paved the way for several new products such as Marvellous Creations and Dairy Milk Pebbles. It is launching activity for its Cadbury Heroes brand later this month, which also includes its first TV appearance since 2002. The brand is also rolling out a £1.3m campaign for its new chocolate-covered cereal Crunchum brand.
A spokesman for the brand says snacks consumed in the evening - are now worth £5.6m – with chocolate being the biggest category during this period. Previous off-limits summer gatherings such as BBQ are now seen as opportunities, he adds.
He says: Summer is normally a quite time for us, but were targeting the BBQ market for the first time rather than our usual sales focus around the colder seasons.
Elsewhere, Mars is running a £9m marketing campaign over the summer to support its new Twix Mix range. The seasonal push aims to tap into the rise of the big-night-in-trend, according to the company, which has seen 40 per cent growth over the last four years. Additionally, Maltesers latest promotion offers children free passes to several summer events.
The campaigns are running alongside social media activity for the Snickers Bites range, launched last year, where fans are asked to create their own designs using the chocolate for a chance to appear on its brand page. The strategy helped push the brand to more than 10 million fans at the start of the month (1 July).
Marcia Mogelonsky, director of insight for Food and Drink at Mintel says in the current economic climate, brands are looking for ways to extend the season for chocolate, by finding openings such as summer.
She adds: There are two ways to leverage the positioning - by creating products expressly for the season… which parallels the seasonal advertising and marketing for more traditional seasonal chocolates (e.g. Easter or Christmas) or by creating a new occasion for eating chocolate (Summer) and new flavors or packaging to go with it.
She adds: There are two ways to leverage the positioning - by creating products expressly for the season… which parallels the seasonal advertising and marketing for more traditional seasonal chocolates (e.g. Easter or Christmas) or by creating a new occasion for eating chocolate (Summer) and new flavors or packaging to go with it.
