And in the Diet Aisle . . .
Supermarket buyers weren’t going along with the taste test, but Dan Williams didn’t sweat it. As vp-marketing and sales for the Dairy Foods Association – the nation’s largest dairy co-op – Williams spearheads the launch this month of Healthy Pleasures, a milk-based diet supplement. The marketing centers on a taste claim: 59 percent of dieting women prefer the taste of Healthy Pleasures to Slim-Fast. The 10.5-ounce glass bottles are more like Frappuccino (which DFA co-packs for Pepsi and Starbucks) than a diet drink. Healthy Pleasures bows in eight southeastern markets this month, the first step in a gradual national rollout.
“Our whole pitch is that we’ll grow the category a number of ways, with superior taste.” Williams ticks off a list: Grow penetration among men to 60 percent from 30 percent. Extend use throughout the year. Get consumers thinking about supplements as healthful food, not diet food. “It’s like Healthy Choice dinners. They changed the way people think about frozen food. [Health is] an ownable position in the supplement category right now.”
So the sales call went like this: DFA’s rep invited the buyer to taste Healthy Pleasures and Slim-Fast side-by-side, to reinforce consumer taste tests. Buyers balked. “They wouldn’t taste the competitors,” Williams says. “They would only taste Healthy Pleasures.”
It worked anyway. Buyers are shelving Healthy Pleasures in the health and beauty care section with minimal slotting fees. HBC aisles have lower slotting fees than food aisles anyway, but Healthy Pleasures’ taste claim helped minimize even those. “Accounts tell us Nestle doesn’t support Sweet Success, and Slim-Fast gets support, but there’s no news in it,” Williams explains. A Winn-Dixie buyer told the DFA rep he lost 30 pounds in two months on Slim-Fast, but stopped drinking it because of the taste and gained 45 pounds back.
Still, Slim-Fast is formidable competition. Sales for Ultra Slim-Fast jumped 44 percent to $393 million for 52 weeks ended Oct. 11, per Information Resources Inc., Chicago. (Unit sales were up 21 percent.) That alone helped boost the $976 million weight control/nutritionals category 12 percent, even though volume sales only rose 3 percent, according to IRI. No. 2 Ensure fell 10 percent to $142 million; Nestle’s Sweet Success fell 20 percent to $46 million, IRI reports. Mead-Johnson’s Boost rose 12 percent to $52 million.
DFA introduces Healthy Pleasures with 30:30 radio spots tagged with the retailers’ message. Tie-ins with disc jockeys extend the media buy, with on-air endorsements and live remote broadcasts. Heavy sampling and some couponing support. PS Promotions, Chicago, handles. The agency developed a 1996 promotion centered on a national tour of the Beach Boys for Mead-Johnson’s nutritional drink Boost.
Healthy Pleasures may be DFA’s first retail promotion, but the co-op is no stranger to the supermarket. Kansas City-based DFA was formed in early ’98 through the merger of four regional co-ops. DFA co-packs shelf-stable dairy products like Mead-Johnson’s Similac, Frito-Lay cheese dips, and Starbucks’ Frappuccino, and it bought Borden’s cheese business last year. Its annual sales are $8 billion.
