- October 2, 2014
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Kraft Foods Spells Marketing C-O-N-T-E-N-T
Any child growing up in the late 70s probably still remembers the jingle, “America Spells Cheese K-R-A-F-T.” With its gooey goodness and easy-to-prepare convenience, Kraft Foods defined home cooking since the early 1900s.
The American brand icon also has a remarkable history with content marketing, well before the term consumed our marketing mindset.
As reported in Advertising Age, Kraft Foods has been publishing content marketing for decades. Its 18-year-old Food & Family magazine, once mailed free to one in 10 U.S. households, was later converted to paid circulation and still beats titles, such as Food & Wine, according to Julie Fleischer, the company’s director of data, content and media.
Fleischer delivered the keynote address at the 2014 Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland and disclosed some tasty insights about content marketing. Kraft now generates the equivalent of 1.1 billion ad impressions a year and a four-times-better return on investment through content marketing than through even targeted advertising, she said.
Fleischer went on to explain that “one key to Kraft’s success has been thinking of content in some ways the same as paid advertising,” an approach she called “relentlessly pursuing worthiness.”
In fact, she called out Facebook and other social media platforms for falsely leading many marketers “to de-value content by thinking of the distribution as free.”
She also levied an even bolder prediction: “The days of free organic reach are rapidly coming to an end,” she said. “If you wouldn’t spend money behind it, then why do it? It’s shouting into the wind without making a sound. How many of us are guilty of being slaves to a calendar or posting cadence?”
For brands seeking to emulate the content marketing success of Kraft Foods, Fleischer shared some secrets:
Market to Individuals, Not Segments: Kraft tracks 22,000 attributes of the more than 100 million annual visitors to its websites and has merged its content and data-management platforms. The data is used to individualize its programmatic media buying.
Pay Attention to Trends and Apply Them Quickly: She illustrated this tip with an example: “If Parmesan roasted potatoes and green velvet cupcakes are doing well organically on Pinterest, then Kraft adds them to beta tests for promoted pins, as well.”
Remember That Content and Ads are Connected: Content outperforms advertising in terms of engagement, “but relevant content programmed strategically with your advertising makes your advertising work harder for you,” she advised.
Kraft Foods is just one brand spending more on content marketing than before. For other examples, go on to “Brands Shift Budgets to Content Marketing.”
