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Kraft shifts more of budget to mobile amid summer campaign success

Kraft Foods? summer campaign with LiveNation and Spotify is finding success on mobile and social, prompting the consumer packaged goods brand to shift more of its budget to mobile from desktop.

The ?For the Love of Summer? campaign is part of Kraft?s effort to win over millennials, who consume more of their meals at home than any other generational group, and Hispanics, who over-index in various mobile behaviors. The budget reallocation suggests the brand is being rewarded in its effort to create a fun, family-friendly community on mobile and social for consumers to celebrate summer.

?Two important characteristics of these groups are that they seek customization, and are large mobile users,? said Ryan Galili, senior brand manager for brand strategy with Kraft, Northfield, IL. ?The program was structured to fit the mobile user who loves to discover content on their own and participate as they please.?

Snackable content
In the campaign, participants select their favorite summer occasion where they can discover trending summer recipes, stream the music they like and win the concert of their choice through Kraft?s partnership with entertainment company LiveNation and streaming-music service Spotify. 

The national-scale program blends in-store programming, events and a sweepstakes with an online recipe and entertainment hub, www.fortheloveofsummer.com.

Blending music events, a sweepstakes and recipes via mobile.

?We like to call it snackable content, and it?s caught the attention of our consumers and performed well for us,? Ms. Galili said. ?So much, that since the launch of the campaign last month, we have shifted media dollars from desktop to mobile to even further boost engagement.

?In addition to our mobile site content, we?re also using social media in a big way ? giving consumers plenty of opportunities to join the conversation and share or pin our recipes, using hashtags that we capture on the microsite,? she said.

Kraft?s light-hearted Facebook postings of summer recipes and tips on its ?official U.S. Kraft Foods fan page? evoke the heyday of traditional service magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping and Family Circle that typically run summer recipes. 

Kraft?s postings, however, show a connection with the mobile era by including calls to action such as guessing how many cherries it takes to make a cherry pie in a cherry pie recipe, or tagging the person you think is as sweet as cherry pie. 

?This is a smart move for Kraft,? Aliza Freud, founder and CEO of SheSpeaks, New York, said of Kraft?s Facebook recipes page. ?Kraft recognizes that social is providing brands with unprecedented access to consumers and shoppers.  

?By creating their own content and pushing this content in social, Kraft has an opportunity to not only engage consumers with this recipe content but also link to purchase,? she said. ?For example, Kraft could include links to buy the products featured in the recipe on the content itself.  

?It?s a great way for Kraft to provide interesting and valuable content to consumers while also making it easy to buy the products featured,? she said.

Targeting millennials who like eating at home.

Kraft?s social outreach fits with the growing number of millennials who are taking more meals at home.

The under-35 age group consumed eight more meals at home over the last year, and accounted for 26 percent of the $6.2 billion small kitchen appliance market in 2014 ? up from 21 percent in 2013, according to research from the NPD Group published on Progressive Grocer.com.

Younger consumers opt to cook more meals at home because it saves money, is healthier, tastes better and they enjoy cooking and have the time to do so, according to NPD.

The findings followed a 2013 NPD study showing millennials sourced more than two-thirds of their dinner meals from home.

Dominant pathway
Kraft?s social push reflects the importance of mobile in building community where fans of a brand?s products can join the conversation.

Celebrating summer via mobile and social.

?Brands should focus first on making sure that the content they are pushing is useful and relevant to their consumers,? Ms. Freud said.  ?Consumers quickly sniff out if content is without purpose and they will stop engaging with brands if content does not pass the sniff test, so to speak.?

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York