![]() “For us, an influencer was not some big celebrity we were going to pay $1m. ![]() On influencers, the company used college interns to trawl through healthy hashtags and find and contact fitness influencers with a sample or discount code to try the ice cream. “To us are not a waste of spend because may not buy the product or look at the ad but compared to a billboard – where millions of people might drive by and see it but not care – we could be more effective,” he explains. The company had two tactics - targeted ads and influencers - that they used to build up their brand. Bouton laments “buzzwords” around influencer marketing but says Facebook and Instagram were crucial in spreading word of mouth. We haven’t been trained to think inside the box. We haven’t been groomed within the marketing world or MBA programmes. “Most people who were shopping, they will take your free sample but they don’t want to spend five seconds much less five minutes hear you tell them why your ice cream is different.” What we found is it cost a lot, and it didn’t work. If we just go in-store and do demos people will be blown away by this healthy ice cream. It was a lot of trial and error with marketing.”Īt the beginning, the brand was using in-store sampling and demonstrations at trade shows to try to build up its name but quickly realised this well-trodden route wasn’t working.īouton explains: “We thought all we need to do is sample this product. We haven’t been trained to think inside the box which has allowed us to question a lot of conventional wisdom. The marketing strategyĪlthough Bouton doesn’t advise only eating Halo Top ice cream, with a pint ranging from between 280 and 360 calories, the brand is marketed as something to be enjoyed every day rather than as an occasional indulgence.įounded by Justin Woolverton in 2012, Bouton joined a year later and together the pair of former lawyers built the brand with no marketing background.īouton explains: “We haven’t been groomed within the CPG industry, the marketing world or MBA programmes. The brand’s use of natural sweeteners, rather than sugar, has been questioned, with critics also questioning whether it should be allowed to call itself ice cream given its low milk fat content. That doesn’t mean it has been plain sailing since, however. It went viral and Halo Top went from a debt-ridden startup to the best-selling pint of ice cream in the US. After hearing about the brand through a personal trainer, a writer for GQ detailed his experience of losing 10lbs after only eating the ice cream for 10 days. It turned out another year was all the brand need. We were discontinued in a bunch of stores and we were begging stores that hadn’t to just give us another chance, give us another year we said.” He explains: “20 were the tough years where we were hanging on by a thread. It is stocked in Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco, as well as Ocado.īeing stocked in the UK’s big four supermarkets was almost impossible for the brand’s chief operation officer Douglas Bouton to imagine four years ago, when he was begging retailers not to stop selling the product. That translates to roughly one pint every nine minutes. Halo Top launched in the UK at the beginning of the year and according to figures from IRI had already sold nearly 3.3 million pints of ice cream by 8 September 2018. READ MORE: How Häagen-Dazs is reimagining the brand for the Instagram generationĪnd just last week Unilever launched a competitor brand, Culture Republick, in the US, and has introduced lower calorie flavours of Ben & Jerry’s. Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, has spoken of the competition, with CFO Graeme Pitkethly telling investors last October that “very, very quickly” Halo Top had “taken 1.5 share points from us”. It’s rise has caused such a stir that big brands are taking notice. Halo Top uses sugar substitutes stevia and erythritol to sweeten the ice cream without racking up the calorie count. The growing popularity of ‘healthy’ ice cream is in part down to the rise of one brand, Halo Top, whose low-calorie, high protein tubs have been flying off the shelf since 2016. ![]() Five years ago, ice cream and weight loss would have been considered polar opposites yet fast-forward to today and the shelf is cluttered with tubs proclaiming their low-calorie count. ![]()
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