B&G Foods, a small manufacturer of just fifteen brands, has more than doubled turnover in the last five years by utilising the efforts of category rivals to drive sales of its own products.
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The New Jersey group relies on guerrilla marketing tactics such as piggybacking on promotions by rivals, reports the Associated Press. For example, during this year’s Super Bowl, celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse had been hired by Coke and Kraft to promote their products. By happy coincidence, Lagasse is also the public face of B&G’s Emeril range of seasonings, salad dressings and pasta sauce. So, B&G made sure that its displays were placed next to official Super Bowl counterparts wherever possible.
Most small companies rely on their larger rivals to take the category forward, and B&G president and CEO David L. Wenner has partly blamed last year’s 8.5% drop in sales of B&G’s Polaner jams and jellies on complacency on the part of category giant Smucker’s.
“My frustration is that Smucker’s isn’t letting people know why they should eat these products as opposed to cream cheese,” said Wenner, whose Polaner brand beat its rival to supermarket shelves with jams that contain more fruit and fewer calories. “They are the 800-pound gorilla, and they need to come up with something exciting.”
B&G’s stated strategy is to acquire so-called “orphan brands”, which have been neglected by larger companies, and then lavish attention on them. None of B&G’s 15 brands capture more than 7% of its category, according to the research association Information Resources.
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By GlobalDataLast year B&G sales reached US$332.4m from US$151.6m in 1997.
