Tag Archives: brand management

by | Wednesday, November 2, 2022 · 8:48 am

General Mills Adds Brand Loyalty Program

High prices and inflation are big issues for consumers these days. Food inflation reached a 43-year high in June. As inflation keeps prices going high, many consumers are switching to lower-cost store brands instead of higher priced name brands.

To help keep loyal consumers, and to gain new ones, General Mills has launched its first-ever brand loyalty program called Good Rewards. The program includes special offers and points for consumers that can be redeemed for products, gift cards, and more, helping families stretch their grocery dollars.

The program gives consumers rewards every time they purchase General Mills products. Consumers scan receipts after shopping to get rewards, including one percent back on all General Mills purchases.

Good Rewards is part of the popular app Fetch Reward. With roughly 15 million Fetch users, it is the top downloaded shopping app for iPhone and the second most downloaded app for Android users. General Mills has a goal of 1 million consumers to use Good Rewards within a year; in less than a month the gained 350,000 users.

Rewards programs also offer brands a detailed look at consumer behavior and purchase habits. The better companies are at understanding their customers, the more opportunity exists to offer personalized rewards.

Get rewarded!

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. Start with a discussion about loyalty and rewards programs and their use in marketing.
  2. Have students count up the number of different rewards programs they participate with. Who has the most?
  3. Show Good Rewards website: https://www.generalmills.com/news/stories/introducing-good-rewards
  4. Show Fetch Rewards website: https://www.fetchrewards.com/
  5. Discuss setting SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound).
  6. Divide students into teams. Have each team develop five SMART objectives for General Mills Good Rewards.
  7. Discuss the objectives. How would the objectives change if a different strategy was used?

Sources:  Johnson, B. (5 August 2022). General Mills adds loyalty app. Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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by | Saturday, October 29, 2022 · 9:02 am

Grape-Nuts Cereal Stands the Test of Time

This article is a bit of a reversal – instead of writing about cutting-edge technology products, or autonomous cars, or drones, or another exciting technology, we’re writing about what may be one of the oldest products still on the market. Any guesses?

It’s Grape-Nuts cereal. At 125-years on grocery shelves, Grape-Nuts is one of the oldest ready-to-eat cereals. The other two cereals that are still being sold today after their introduction to the marketplace in the 19th century are Shredded Wheat and Corn Flakes.

And, even at its advanced age, Grape-Nuts is still the same product that it was 125-years ago (although manufacturing has been modernized). And to be clear, the cereal has never contained either grapes or nuts. The name was derived from the manufacturing process that resulted in a ‘grape sugar with a nutty texture’.

Why has the product endured over all these years? Perhaps because it is a healthy food that still has a low-sugar nature-based appeal for consumers. It didn’t depend on trends, color, and lots of sugar.

During the pandemic, Grape-Nuts had production issues resulting in low inventory. The core audience asked “where’s my Grape-Nuts?” and that led to social media and a new, younger group of consumers gaining interest in the brands.

What foods will future generations still be eating?

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. View Grape-Nuts website: https://www.grapenuts.com/
  2. Show a commercial from the 1970s: featuring naturalist Euell Gibbons: https://youtu.be/QffEYYotXIk
  3. Discuss the stages in the product life cycle.
  4. What are the marketing objectives in each stage?
  5. Divide students into teams. Have each team draw a product life cycle and place different cereals and other foods into the PLC.
  6. Why has Grape-Nuts sustained over the decades?
  7. What are the lessons that other discontinued cereals could learn from Grape-Nuts?
  8. Next, have students brainstorm on how to reposition or revise products/services to that they can move into an earlier stage of the life cycle.

Sources:  Johnson, B. (13 August 2022). Grape-Nuts: It is your grandma’s cereal. Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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by | Thursday, August 18, 2022 · 7:54 am

Mattel Reboots Older Brands

Consider classic Mattel toys such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Jurassic World, Star Wars, American Girl, Masters of the Universe, Monster High, Thomas & Friends, and many more. What are your  favorites?

And of course, since it was founded in 1945, Mattel also had many toys over the years that are no longer in play.

Barbie (one of Mattel’s oldest brands) must have been lonely and looking for her old friends as Mattel has now reintroducing several older toy lines that have not been on the shelves in decades! Welcome back to Major Matt Mason, Big Jim, and Pulsar. (All lines that students, and most likely their parents, are unfamiliar with.)

The revitalized toys will be launched under the banner of “Back in Action” as a way to revive old brands and capitalize on Mattel’s intellectual property. Mattel is also using Comic-Con as an important marketing tool for launching the toys lines. To help sell toys into the collectible market, the action figures will be in smaller sizes.

The reintroduction of old brands is not unusual in toys. Consider how Mattel capitalized on its older Masters of the Universe toys. These were introduced in the 1980s and eventually grew to a $2 billion franchise. As it lost sales, Mattel shelved the intellectual property, but revived it years later as a collectible. Then last year an animated series from Netflix for adults and children reemerged, accompanied by the Masters of the Universe toy line (He-man!).

Welcome back to the old brands!

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. Discuss the stages in the product life cycle. What are the marketing objectives in each stage?
  2. Divide students into teams. Have each team draw a PLC and place toys into each stage of the PLC.
  3. How do toys move through the PLC?
  4. Why bring back the older toy lines?
  5. View a timeline of Mattel’s evolution: https://corporate.mattel.com/history
  6. Also show Mattel’s brand portfolio: https://corporate.mattel.com/brand-portfolio
  7. Student teams: Develop a marketing campaign for one of the three toy lines. What elements are needed?

Sources:  Schmidt, G. (19 July 2022). Mattel opens its vault to revitalize dormant brands. New York Times.

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