Wonderful, the world’s largest purveyor of pistachios and packaged nuts, hadn’t done an out-of-home (OOH) marketing push in more than 15 years.
That is, until a week ago, when it began a campaign across six major markets to promote its new no-shell pistachio packs. Tagline: “Pistachi-on-the-go.”
As the category incumbent, with in-store bins and displays at practically every airport, convenience store and cash register, there hasn’t been a major need for OOH ads, Diana Salsa, the company’s VP of marketing, tells AdExchanger.
But now there’s a whole new product line, and the brand is back to old-school methods of building awareness.
We caught up with Salsa regarding the new campaign, as well as Wonderful’s approach to the new world of retail distribution and shopper marketing.
AdExchanger: If it had been a generation since Wonderful’s last out-of-home advertising push, why now?
DIANA SALSA: The media really lends itself to this product, being literally on the go.The genesis of the idea is to meet consumers where they are on the go, in their cars and out of home, to try to promote the idea of snacking when you’re not at home.
We have out-of-home billboards in six markets – Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia and Dallas – and we did car wraps for Uber and Lyft cars to be a one-two punch. We’re also working with micro-influencers who are kind of experts in their city, so they’re also telling people about this campaign.
And an in-house data scientist will measure the sales in those markets where there was the exposure, as part of our campaign attribution.
Many retail media networks have out-of-home supply – were any involved here?
We have experimented with retail media networks – Walmart, Roundel, Kroger and others. But that’s a different strategy because they carry our full line of products.
So not for this campaign particularly, but very much part of our marketing strategy, and I expect it to grow. Retail media networks still feel like a bit of the Wild West. Every network has different offerings.
But we’re focused on connecting the dots across advertising. So, if someone goes to our website, we want to retarget those folks with ads on Amazon, for example, or in Kroger. Or make sure Kroger shoppers are seeing our ad on Facebook, as well as on the retailer site. We have a team internally that makes sure we’re capturing those impressions and cross-referencing ads so that we’re not only hitting the same people.
It feels like a very new challenge for companies that are really built to stand out in stores now having to win customers online.
They do mirror one another, in-store and online.
Some of the main snack keywords, for online keyword strategies, are “protein” or “low sodium,” and those are messages that we’re shouting on our in-store bins as well. “Big on flavor, low on salt,” is one of those messages.
One thing that is unique for us as a snack brand is that we’re in produce in the grocery store, so there’s that built-in health association, and then we’re shouting those messages on our in-store bins. It should be a similar kind of experience online.
You mention the online keyword targeting, and it’s a good example of how, online, someone searches “low sodium snack” or “protein snack,” and all the brands can jump the aisle, so to speak.
That’s true. But we see the same behavior as an opportunity.
For example, if you’re looking for barbecue-flavored chips or snacks. Well, we have a barbecue-flavored pistachio that might steal away that impression online to say, “Oh, if you’re really digging that flavor, here’s a healthier alternative.”
That means we have ways we win across flavored competition online in particular. We’ve got an asset on Amazon, for example, that’s “ditch the chips.” It’s for barbecue and sea salt and vinegar pistachios with no shells, and that’s a perfect opportunity to fight for a healthy swap.
Which, to your point, would be different in a store, because those products aren’t next to the chips in stores; they’re next to bananas.
That’s a product specific to Amazon?
It was an Amazon-specific creative asset. But we liked it so much that we’re likely to put it in more places.
Sometimes we learn about one tactic that works for one retailer, whether it’s Amazon or another retail media network, and then we can duplicate that strategy on another platform. We have a high test-and-learn environment. And, at Wonderful, we have the distribution where we can leverage that somewhere else.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
