Brands presence

For the second year, LU has been elected number one of the favorite brands by French consumers in 2012. The study has been led by Le Jury des Grandes Marques, an independent organization that distinguishes each year the most prestigious brands in France.

Source: Toluna, 2012

The result of the study shows that French people still like brands and especially those, which offer sweet products. Sugar provides pleasure and it is natural that consumers prefer brands that answer their greed needs. But not all brands are equal. Let's have a look at the results of our 3 brands :

LU

9 people out of ten claim that they like Lu, that is to say, 88% of surveyed people answered "I like" when they saw the Lu logo. The brand also benefits from a very good awareness in France. Thus, 99% of people know the brand (aided awareness).

BN

As regards the brand BN, 88% of French people know the United Biscuits' brand but only 70% of them say that they like it. It is interesting to also observe that BN is more appreciated by lower social categories than upper ones. The main reason is more likely to be the price of BN biscuits that correspond to the mass strategy of BN.

Bonne Maman

The brand Bonne Maman also benefits from a good awareness in France (94%) and almost 8 people out of 10 like the brand (78%). The results of the survey also show that Bonne Maman is one of the favorite brands of women. That's right, women are more sensitive to the nostalgia feeling and to the traditional values that the brand conveys. 

Methodology : 

• representative sample of 5,000 people over 15 years old. 
• 1060 brands presented
• 2 periods: Nov/Dec 2010 and Sept. 2012
• 1 question per brand : I like /I dislike /Neither one nor the other /I don't know well or I don't know at all

Thanks to Charles Lepeu for providing the results of the survey.

Brands and social networks

Facing the TV advertising decline, brands can find complement to communicate on their products. That is why they more and more often turn to a channel less expansive, but nevertheless efficient: Internet .

We saw before that LU, BN and Bonne Maman developed their websites (both institutional and dedicated to children) to be more attractive online. But what for social networks? 

As regards Twitter, none of our 3 favorite brands use it for the moment. This social network is still in its beginning in France and not well spread. Concerning Facebook, the social network benefits from approximately one billion active users that makes it the website the most visited in the world. So you realize the importance of being present and active on it! But curiously, Bonne Maman, BN and Petit Ecolier don't have the same strategy about social networks presence. Let's analyze it !

First, we can observe that only Lu has an official page on Facebook and counts more than 12,000 "Like" mentions. 

 www.facebook.com/LU

LU also created a Facebook page for one of its brand: Véritable Petit Ecolier, but less known since its gathers only 639 "Like".

www.facebook.com/veritablepetitecolierdelu

When you look for BN on Facebook, you will find a page that counts almost 150,000 "Like" worldwide! But it is not an official page, probably a fan one. With this big enthousiasme around the brand, we would recommend to BN to create its official page! There is a BN community who is looking for more information about the products and, more important, is proud of saying it on Facebook. But isn't it too late? Can the brand retrieve these 150,000 fans? 

www.facebook.com/bnbiscuits

Finally, the brand the less present on Facebook is Bonne Maman. There is only a fake page that gathers 1,500 Facebook users. When you look at it, it is not very surprising. Does Facebook correspond to Bonne Maman's values about tradition and nostalgia? It's not sure. Nevertheless, being a traditional brand on Facebook is probably less damaging for the image than a fake account that misleads consumers and convey false information.

www.facebook.com/MrBonneMaman

The goal with a Facebook page is to make the brand known, but, above all, to hear ourselves speak about products the brand sells. It is a channel easy to reach for most of consumers (more than 80% of French people use it), who see through it a new way to inform about a brand, a product, and especially through a more ludic and dynamic manner.

On the brand side, it allows to keep the consumer up to date with the actuality of the brand. The objective is to make the product more visible, trying to establish a close relationship and so to improve the notoriety: if an internet user likes the page, all his/her friends would see it and it will maybe catch their attention and lead them to consult the page too.

That is why it is really important to build a strategy even in a social network!

http://www.lemonde.fr

http://lecercle.lesechos.fr

Cobranding & Licensing to catch new consumers

In order to recruit always more consumers, biscuits industrials are continuously looking for new ideas.

That is what LU did in working with Côte d'Or in Cobranding. The aim here was to target more adults and more gourmet consumers proposing flavors such as plain chocolate or praline.

In this way, LU can strengthen his position on the adult segment where he was only present with the almond biscuits or Calèche. Thanks to those 3 references (milk chocolate/plain chocolate and praline flavoured chocolate), LU wants to increase its adult segment of 50% until 2013.

The packaging of this LU/Côte d'OR biscuits is more qualitative and keeps the dark and class Côte d'Or colors to catch previous lover chocolate consumers. 

Another new way to recruit people is the licence. Licensing is renting or leasing a character or a name to a renter which use it in a good way to not depreciate the image. BN understood very quickly the interest of this licensing to catch more consumers and launched his Titeuf and Oui-Oui biscuits. He is surfing on the cartoons wave to be sure to attract the more concerned that is to say the children cartoons lovers. BN saw a big success to his approach because he realizes 15% of his global sales through licences. Products stay very simple but attractive with for instance, mini Oui-Oui chocolate tartlets, mini Dora fruits tartlets and Titeuf chocolate topped. On the packaging we find the same elements that the cartoons which are, the name, the colors and the environment. It totally corresponds to the cartoons universe and permit to children to immediately recognize the character. 

As for LU, he used since the beginning this way to catch children as customers. He was the first to launch Oui-oui and Titeuf before BN renting these licences. After that, LU launched in 2011 its two Hello Kitty references, one strawberrie biscuit and one little chocolate madeleine.

So, these references have became the anchor point of these two brands in becoming favorite and daily children biscuits.

www.lineaires.com

www.chez-bn.fr

Brands Commitments

Nowadays, we can see an increase of nostalgic consumers due to a new consumption behavior. Indeed, they are more and more preoccupied by what they eat. Mentalities are changing and moving. Which are the reasons explaining this phenomenon?

Products are always fattier, saltier or sweeter or the three in the same time in order to match a large range of consumers with new industry products which provoke obesity, heart diseases, diabetes. People are aware of those issues and realize food could be dangerous and sometimes fatal. It’s easy to see appearing this phenomenon through foods crisis like the chicken flue or Creutzfeld-Jakob diseases, consumers become suspicious and start not buying anything.

Other reasons explain this skepticism.

First, products are not good identified, it is hard to know where they come from, when they are made, by whom? Traceability exist for any products but not all. 

Second, a food wealth, customers have a large choice of products and in huge quantities with different prices, different qualities but for the same sort of product. Is like the customer is lost in a wealthy sea where food products emerge. So it’s very hard to people finding the good product, the one they looking for, the one they can trust into. 

Third, customers are harassed by many contradictory messages carried by food processing industry praising how good and healthy are their products, they could help decrease cholesterol or reinforce natural defenses and months later customers hear by specialists all the characteristics are not true and bring nothing else than other problems. (Danone Actimel issue). 

And then, all those difficulties are amplified by medias through newspaper, radio, television in exaggerating facts and frightened consumers in a way to selling papers or hear about them and make buzz. 

Actually, consumers don’t know who they could trust into. They are more anxious, suspicious and uncomfortable with food processing industry who worried them. That's why food industry companies decide to deal with it in sharing to people their commitment. Indeed companies become more "Green" and try to drive a reassuring message in order to make people confident in their products. So, we are going to highlight how our 3 brands are doing it:

www.lu.fr et www.chez-bn.fr

Brands duration

Some marketing technics are looking for knowing if brands have a constant capacity of communication in order to evaluate it. It means to study if there is no failure in the message or in the tone.

What about our three brands duration?

    
                            www.youtube.com

Lu, with its biscuit Petit Ecolier, has always kept the same communication strategy. To make it known by the largest number, Lu decided, from the launching of the biscuit, to use essentially TV spots to communicate. Following its slogan "Ce n'est que pour les enfants", their spots has always staged bands of children facing adults ready for anything to taste a crumb of this delice. The watchwords which have always been conveyed are impertinence, pleasure, entertainment, joke ...

By the way, we can't notice any failure in the message or in the tone since 1983, its creation year.

That is not the same for the BN biscuit, launched by United Biscuits in 1997. This change can be explained by their change in target audience. At this beginning, the brand really highlighted its first target, children, in its ad, making them the ambassador of the biscuit (have a look at the video behind dated from 1980).

                            www.youtube.com

But in 1997, victim of its old-fashioned image and the development of its competitors, BN lost more and more market shares. To react, a change concerning the product but also the communication was decided. Then, the target was no longer children but their parents who decide to buy: they needed to seduce them.

This break is visible through the three advertising realised by the trendy agency Fred & Farid. Here, Docteur BN tach us about the product benefits, using humor and sarcasm, approaching relevant topics like global warming or unemployment. It gives to the brand a modern and dynamic image, but as a consumer, the risk is that we don't understand this gap... For me, it is the case: the new advertisings are funny, but I think it is a shame to have to use serious subjects to sell children biscuits. And you, what do you think about it? 

                                                                                         www.youtube.com

Bonne Maman, like LU, has always kept the same strategy of communication, without any failure in their messages. Since the beginning, the brand stages adults who, by eating a Bonne Maman biscuit, remain their tender childhood. The brand clearly plays on the nostalgia: the aim is to convince the consumer that, by buying its product, he will savor the authentic taste of homemade products. Let's have a look at this two videos... Even if the first one is not about biscuit (only launched in 1997), the constant communciation is very clear, and a lot of similar elements appear!

                                                                    www.youtube.com

http://cathienguyen.lescigales.org; http://juliemirande.com; http://www.bonne-maman.com/

Brands protection

When you visit the website of a brand, you have probably noticed the section "Legal notices" at the bottom of the page. It seems to be trivial due to the small font, but it is essential for the brand ! Indeed, in this section, the brand specifies its rights as regards intelectual property (among other topics).

www.bonne-maman.com

This claim warns the visitor that the brand is a registered trademark and consequently, owns all the elements used on the website: name, logo, design, colors, font, characters, etc. Intelectual property specifications have also the aim to warn the offender that he/she runs the risk of being sued for illegal use or copy.

www.chez-bn.com

You may think that it's a bit strict but this mention is essential for the brand. The main key factor of success and also the reason to be for a brand is to be easily recognizable among its competitors. Apart from being a competitive advantage, intelectual property is also a signal of quality and trust. When we can use freely a logo or a design, we are likely to think that it's not the result of a hard-work and is not serious enough to be legally recognized. Moreover, a patent filed provides financial returns for the brand in case of eventual law breaking by individuals or groups.

www.lu-france.fr

So next time you visit a website, be careful and don't copy ! :)

Biscuits Merchandising

What's interesting with biscuits is that everybody from 5 to 80 years old can be reached by at least one of this candies. At the end of a meal, a little sweet touch, drunk with tea, during the 4pm break or while watching TV... Biscuits can be eaten by everybody, everyday at every hour. That is why the biscuits section in supermarkets is so huge and why we have so many references and different tastes; to match perfectly all targets, wants and demands. To give you more precision, let's go analyze a biscuits section!

A biscuits section is organized following the different targets : Family, Adults and Children.

We noticed that the segments generating more traffic are in the two extremities. These are habits segments with daily products such as "Petit Déjeuner" or "BN".

In the middle of the section there are the products named "impulsion products". It is the pleasure pole when customer follow his emotions more than his reason, "It seems delicious, I am going to try it".

Here the merchandising process is to force people to cross the all biscuits section and encourage them to make an impulsive buying.

Breakfast biscuits: Petits déjeuner de LU, BN Casse croûte

Bio/ Light: Store Brands Bio biscuits

Rectangulares: Petit LU, Biscuits Thé de LU

Bretons: Galettes Saint Michel, Roudor Saint Michel

Recipes: Sablés Bonne Maman, Paille d'Or de LU

Side desserts: Langue de Chat et Cigarettes russes de Delacre, Eventail Saint Michel, Tuiles aux amandes de  LU

Fine biscuits: Tentation de Delacre, Coeur aux noisettes de Kambly, Croissant de Lune de Bahlsen, Coeur fourré Côte d'Or de LU

Choco Fruits: Tartelettes Bonne Maman, Pim's de LU

Little Snacking: Mikado de LU, Pick-up de Bahlsen, Oreo

Cookies: Bonne Maman, Granola Cookies de LU, Pepperidge Farm Cookies

Chocolate topped: Delichoc de Delacre, Pepito de LU, Petit Ecolier de LU

Children Pockets: Mini BN, Dinosaurus de LU, Monsieur Bonhomme de Bonne Maman

Fruited: Barquettes trois chatons et Coqueline de LU

Choco filling snacks: Prince de Lu, ChocoREm de Lu, BN