McVities is re-launching its Go Ahead! low-fat cake and biscuit brand. McVities is showing persistence with its Go Ahead! brand, investing in a new marketing campaign to revive flagging sales of the healthy cake and biscuit range. While it is good to adopt a long-term approach to brand investment, the company may well be better served pursuing a slightly different approach.
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By re-launching Go-Ahead! with a £3.5m (US$5.5m) marketing campaign, McVities hopes it can move the brand into a more fruitful era. A new pack design across the range will be launched later this year while unsuccessful lines such as caramel and orange Crunch Bar variants are being axed to make way for the new lower fat products.
McVities is also promising further new introductions next year and it remains confident about the brand’s future outlook despite a certain skepticism emanating from some commentators and leading buyers. The company has said new products would add up to £7m to the brand’s value. And there are signs for optimism – Go Ahead! is still the biggest brand within its segment.
However, low fat cakes actually account for a very small percentage of the market value. Furthermore, the brand seems to have occupied a dangerous ‘middle-of-the-road’ competitive position of being a healthy indulgence. While there is plenty of evidence that many consumers are concerned about having a healthy diet, there’s still a trade-off between taste and health when it comes to snacking. Consumers’ health concerns still remain secondary to taste and relatively few people are prepared to embrace a trade-off between the two.
McVities is correct to adopt a long-term approach towards marketing its Go Ahead! range. Indeed, the real work in new product development often comes in the second year that products are on the market, when marketers can adjust tactics to capitalise on new opportunities or make any necessary re-alignments.
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By GlobalDataGiven that snacking is now growing in prominence as a part of daily nutrition, in the next few years it will become increasingly important that snacking products possess ingredients with a positive health effect. Rather than products focusing on what has been removed such as sugar or fat, manufacturers must increasingly embrace the concept of ‘positive nutrition’. This focuses on what the products have added and specifically concerns innovative ingredients that are inherently good.
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