In celebration of our 25 year anniversary, we asked some of our earliest clients to cast their minds back to their “first time” working with The Value Engineers. Here, Kees Van Der Graaf recalls the development of the fruity ice cream phenomenon, Boomy.

In 1988 the Unilever Ice Cream Researchers developed a great new technology. It was now possible to create an ice cream which could be truly 3 dimensional, with no need for any symmetries. It was basically an application of the injection molding technology from the plastics industry. The only thing that needed to happen was to find a product for which this technology could be the long awaited technical solution.

It was a perfect example of a total disconnect between research and marketing. Marketing had to dream up a concept using this unique and patented process. At the time I was Marketing Director of the Spanish ice cream business. We were known for our creativity, and got the task to launch a great concept exploiting the technical possibilities. As I worked with the Value Engineers in my Walls Meat days I called Paul Walton and shouted “help”. Paul and team did not need a lot of convincing to come to Barcelona to work on this mission Impossible. As we all know no bridge is too high for Paul.

After some initial briefing sessions, including a visit to Unilever Research, TVE came up with some great ideas, of which the one with 3 different fruits on a stick tested very well (see photo). The concept was further developed into a very strong complete marketing mix. Boomy was the name of a fruit eating monster, who would do anything to get his portion of this fruit ice cream. The target audience was young children.  Boomy was reasonably priced.  A cartoon character, lovely comics and a funny TVC supported the launch.

The launch went very well.

Too well. Unilever’s central marketing resources took over the international roll out, and started to tweak the concept without involving The Value Engineers or the Spanish company. The price went up, the positioning was extended to all ice cream consumers, and by doing so they ruined the concept. A great pity, that this piece of brilliant marketing was never given the chance to conquer the market.

During a recent shopping trip I noticed a new product in the ice cream aisle: Magnum Ghana Cocoa. Given my Ghanaian heritage, the reference to the provenance of this new product was really striking for me, and is a great demonstration of how brands – even those established and much-loved in their category – can use NPD to add a unique selling point to differentiate from competitors.

The milk chocolate and hazelnut flavoured Ghana Cocoa, along with the dark chocolate Ecuador version have other winning elements. They provide an opportunity to communicate a level of expertise – Ghana and Ecuador are two of the biggest producers of the world’s cocoa at 17% and 4% respectively (according to 2009/10 figures from the International Cocoa Organisation) – and also enhances Magnum’s (and in turn, Unilever’s) CSR profile, given the new product is being launched with the Rainforest Alliance certification.

There will no doubt be an expected consolidation of loyalty from core users. However, an added benefit for Magnum is the potential to attract new users (such as all of my Ghanaian family!) for whom the desire for a taste of ‘home’ is particularly appealing, as well as those for whom the origins of a product are a source of intrigue, and ultimately, desire.

A clever demonstration of simple and effective NPD from Magnum here, with the potential to re-confirm the brand as one of the market leaders in the chocolate ice-cream category as we approach summer 2011.

“I want to tell you a story…” The power of a good story has long been recognised. Scherezade managed to keep herself alive for 1001 nights by leaving her stories unfinished overnight, keeping her husband, the young sultan in suspense. This winter, in the 7 days leading up to Christmas, Director Giles Lury shares 7 festive branding fables and the marketing morals they espouse.

THE INSPIRATIONAL BIRTHDAY CAKE

Walls Ice Cream has been the source of many different innovations over the years. Perhaps the strangest source of any innovation came from a birthday cake.

In 1980 one of the Walls new product development team received a special birthday cake. His wife had  come across a recipe for ‘Mille feuilles’, the French patisserie that is made from layers of puff pastry and cream which translated means literally a ‘thousand leaves’.

After a splendid birthday supper, she revealed her surprise – the mille feuilles. The reaction was all she could have hoped for. He loved the unique wonderful textural combination of thin, crispy pastry and rich, smooth, thick cream.

The next day at work, he was telling a colleague what a wonderful birthday cake his wife had made him, when suddenly inspiration struck. What if he re-created the delicious eating experience of a mille feuilles but did it as an ice cream.

Ice cream was a natural alternative to the cream and after only a little thought, it was agreed that very thin layers of chocolate seemed a mouth-watering alternative to the pastry.

Now like many other innovations, while the idea seemed simple, the execution was far from it. New processes for layering ice cream and spraying ultra thin layers of chocolate had to be developed, piloted and finally put into practice.

At last everything was in place and the first Viennettas were produced, distributed and sold. Nowadays, nearly twenty years later, Viennetta is still a top-selling ice cream in over 50 countries.
 
The moral of the story is: you can seek inspiration for innovation in markets adjacent to your own.

A quick update on what our saucy friends at Antonio Federici are up to…

Not satisfied at having had their “Immaculately Conceived” pregnant nun banned by the ASA last month (as discussed here a couple of weeks ago) they followed up with this effort below, again using Catholic religious figures as the main protagonists. Unsurprisingly, its glorious but short lived life came to an end when the ASA again put the boot in because of its capacity to cause offence to Catholics.

AF were flabbergasted at this intervention in their effort to raise awareness of the “grave troubles” it considered to be affecting the Catholic Church, explaining that they did not mean to “mock” Catholicism.

“We believe in salivation”? Sure.

Perhaps what we’re seeing here is an example of the reversal of the traditional relationship between PR and ATL advertising. Whereas a press release might have previously been used to seed interest in an ATL campaign, here the ad is a mere mechanism to generate the inevitable PR storm which will follow.

Antonio Federici make Italian ice cream that is so tasty it might as well come from the Gods, or so they’d have us think.

They launched this “immaculately conceived…ice cream is our religion” ad, complete with pregnant nun, in magazines such as The Lady and Grazia to coincide with Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain last month. But unfortunately they misjudged the climate when the ASA pulled it due to complaints received from people claiming it was offensive to Christians, particularly Catholics.

Antonio Federici appealed, claiming they had a right to free expression. Sadly for them, Antonio Federici were told they had to change their habits.

Just another example of a brand trying and failing to cash in on a topical event to boost the impact of what they’re doing.