Download as I wrote a long analysis here

1776 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20036
September 21, 2010
Dear Creators of BabyCarrots.com,
I want to start by saying how impressed I am by your effort to promote baby carrots by adapting the
lessons learned by junk food marketers. This is an important step forward, and I hope that you succeed
in achieving your goal of doubling the baby carrot market in the coming years. However, I believe that
your message could be made even stronger by more clearly focusing on one demographic, specifically
children. Also, while I recognize that the “tongue-in-cheek” style of your advertising is intentional, I feel
that the effort does not take itself seriously enough—and should be followed-up with a more genuine
junk food-style branding effort.
I am sending these suggestions not to be critical, but to help you improve your efforts. If we are to
address the obesity epidemic that is currently plaguing the United States—and increasingly the world—
it is essential that we shift our food consumption patterns away from unhealthy junk food items to fresh
vegetables. I hope that as your new baby carrot marketing effort succeeds, you will be able to expand
this type of innovative messaging to other markets around the world, including by committing a share of
the revenue generated by your marketing campaign to these other areas.
By way of background, I am the director of the Worldwatch Institute report State of the World 2010:
Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability. In this report, I analyze how to use key
institutions—including the media and marketing—to make living healthily and sustainably as natural as
living as a consumer feels today. In your own effort, you are seeking not only to promote baby carrots,
but to transform the dietary norms of Americans so that people associate the carrots with “fun, cool,
and sexy” (as your three commercials suggest and which is an important formula used by marketers)
and thus reach for them as naturally as they now reach for chips.
But even more effective than simply marketing baby carrots is to apply what McDonald’s and Coca-Cola
learned long ago: change the preferences of children, and you’ll create a customer base for life.
Currently, your TV ads appear to be targeting three separate demographics: children, teenagers, and
young men. In the long term, however, targeting your resources more directly at one single
demographic—children—will achieve two important goals. First, it will automatically hit a second
demographic (parents), who may serve as active promoters of this campaign to their children. Second,
and more importantly, it will help set children’s preference for baby carrots before they acquire the
taste and preference for chips and other unhealthy snacks, while also creating lifelong customers.
Research has found that food marketing is very effective in shaping children’s food preferences and that
targeting children will create strong product loyalty Research has found that food marketing is very
effective in shaping children’s food preferences and that targeting children will create strong product
loyalty (see specifically Institute of Medicine's 2006 report, Food Marketing to Children and Youth:
Threat or Opportunity?). But this requires a different tack than your current one. Tongue-in-cheek
humor (as the “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food” slogan represents) appeals to adults, as does the advertisement
for the iPhone game starring an office worker. Meanwhile, the video game and the two advertisements
where the protagonists are played by teenagers target older children or possibly pre-teen audiences. I
would propose, however, focusing your efforts on even younger customers.
Currently, one packaging design features an orange rabbit that appears to be a spoof of two popular
junk food icons: the Trix rabbit and the Cheetos tiger. Your rabbit offers far greater potential than you
utilize and should be at the center of your branding efforts. Create an elaborate story around it, make it
the star of your future video games, and give it a strong personality. Look at the Trix Rabbit, the Nesquik
Bunny, the Cheetos Tiger, Lucky the Leprechaun, the Keebler Elves, Snap, Crackle and Pop, Froot Loop’s
Toucan Sam, and so on. Most of these characters have robust personalities and back stories, as should
your spokescartoon.
Perhaps, in his back story, the BC (Baby Carrots) Bunny could be at odds with farmers in trying to eat the
carrots they grow, offering a Peter-Rabbit-esque rebellious streak that seems to work so well with
cartoon protagonists. Or, perhaps, he is a suburban rabbit who has had to start sneaking into grocery
stores to get his carrots because of the loss of farms and now has to elude security cameras and the
trolls that live in the freezer section (yes, trolls—who says they only live under bridges?). This latter
scenario may offer an opportunity to also teach children about the importance of farms and gardens,
which will, in the long term, reinforce a dietary preference for produce over processed foods. It might
also give our rabbit protagonist an opportunity to try junk food (while in a grocery store) and, not
surprisingly, find it greasy and gross (or maybe even use it to distract the slovenly, junk food-eating
trolls).
After carrying out your current campaign—which I think successfully introduces the idea of applying junk
food marketing rules to baby carrots—I would encourage you to redirect future efforts specifically to the
kid demographic and to abandon the tagline “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food,” which, while funny for adults, is
confusing and doesn’t stand on its own. Instead, find a strong line—such as Slim Jim’s “Snap Into it!” or
Cocoa Puffs’ “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”—and promote it as earnestly as these brands do.
Marketing efforts should continue to include commercial advertising, focused both on kid’s shows (like
cartoons and Nickelodeon) as well as parenting magazines that can help parents redirect their children’s
love of branded characters to snack foods they can be proud of. But to succeed in the long term, it is
important to view your advertising effort as part of a wider effort to transform dietary norms. This
means also creating classroom content for schools, approaching school lunchrooms to encourage them
to offer baby carrots in their new junk food packaging in lunch rooms, and so on. Most teachers will
probably be willing or even enthusiastic to use these “branded” materials—assuming that they are of
high educational value—rather than materials they typically receive that promote candy, chips, and soft
drinks, and which are clearly inappropriate for classrooms.
This classroom effort will also offer higher return on investment, since producing school materials can
be significantly cheaper than placing TV ads. As sales grow and as additional funds for marketing are
generated, these efforts could naturally expand into other areas, such as product placements in TV
shows and films, and partnerships with other companies (perhaps a BC Bunny-themed promotional Lego
set?). Maybe you could even develop a branded cartoon series about the Bunny’s adventures as he
seeks to find the “magical land where carrots still grow freely in the ground,” always hotly pursued by
the evil junk-food eating trolls.
These are, of course, just a few thoughts I had about your current effort, but I would be happy to
elaborate on these ideas if you find them useful. You can contact me at [email protected]
or (202) 573-7459. I wish you the best of luck in your important effort to shift our diets away from chips
and sugar and toward a much healthier alternative.
Sincerely,
Erik Assadourian
Senior Fellow, Worldwatch Institute
www.transformingcultures.org
CC: Bolthouse Farms,
Steve Cody and Harry Sheaffer, Coggins Farm
Leon Elwell, Blackwell Land
Jason Stallaert and Kevin Stallaert, Kejay Farms
Brian Kirschenmann, Kirschenmann Farms
John E. Andrews, Trinity Farms, Inc.
John Burton, Peter Rabbit Farms
Neil Bassetti Farms,
and Mercer Canyons