Launch PR

Most Memorable New Product Launch Preview: McDonald's Southen Style Chicken Biscuit

Here is the last of five preview videos of this year’s potential Most Memorable New Product Launch finalists.

For additional content about Most Memorable New Product Launch, please visit http://www.MMNPL.com.

Most Memorable New Product Launch Preview: Nintendo Wii Fit

Here is our fourth of five preview videos of this year's potential Most Memorable New Product Launch finalists.

For additional content about Most Memorable New Product Launch, please visit http://www.MMNPL.com.

Most Memorable New Product Launch: Clorox Green Works

Here is our third of five preview videos of this year's potential Most Memorable New Product Launch finalists.

For additional content about Most Memorable New Product Launch, please visit http://www.MMNPL.com.

Most Memorable New Product Launch Preview: Frosted Flakes Gold

Here is our second of five preview videos of this year's potential MMNPL finalists.

For additional content about Most Memorable New Product Launch, please visit http://www.MMNPL.com.

Most Memorable New Product Launch: Bud Light Lime

Schneider Associates, Mintel and IRI are eagerly awaiting the results of the 2008 Most Memorable New Product Launch (MMNPL) survey. To kick things off, here is the first of five preview videos of this year’s potential MMNPL finalists.

For additional content about Most Memorable New Product Launch, please visit http://www.MMNPL.com.

Calories count— even for dogs

According to a 2006 study, 30 percent of American adults are overweight. And so are most of their dogs. Statistics from a recent veterinary report show that man’s best friend is also tipping the scales a little too far, with 25 percent of all American dogs classified as overweight.

Since Americans and their pets are both battling weight problems, it’s not surprising the diet markets for these two groups are similar. To capture this market of consumers with overindulging dogs, Del Monte Pet Products introduced Pup-Peroni 50 Calorie Packs, the first portion controlled snacks for canines.

Calorie conscious snackers have turned 100 calorie packs into a $200 million annual goldmine. According to a February USA Today article, 82 single serving products touting 100 or fewer calories were released in 2007. In 2004, there were only seven. This trend is snowballing among health conscious Americans, and Del Monte is pioneering the movement in the pet food market.

“They're a guilt-free snack,” says Matthew Park, Del Monte's marketing vice president. “Just as 100-calorie packs help people 50-calorie packs help dogs cut calories and live healthier.”

Does this trend have the legs to create a whole new market for calorie conscious dog owners? Are the Pup-Peroni 50 Calorie Snack Pouches memorable enough to become the first ever pet food to crack the top 10 Most Memorable New Product Launch List? Will they soon have Weight Watchers for dogs?

KFC: A New Flavor to Savor

It's been over 65 years since Colonel Harland Sanders introduced his Original Recipe®  in 1940. This year, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) added Smokey Chipotle Crispy Fried Chicken to its menu.  The new flavor, containing a secret blend of 11 herbs and spices, is the second new recipe to debut on KFC's menu since the Colonel's original creation.

KFC has gone above and beyond to publicize their latest "secret" recipe. According to the Associated Press, the recipe is so top secret that only two company executives have access to it at any time. For added security, the secret recipe was moved to a new location. The ingredients were placed in a lock box and handcuffed to a security guard who rode in an armored car with a police escort.

"We've worked tirelessly to develop this new flavor," said KFC'€™s chief marketing officer, James O'Reilly.  €œ"We don'€™t take fried chicken flavor introductions lightly at KFC, and we took our time to painstakingly perfect this new recipe."€

KFC launched a TV advertising campaign featuring 15 and 30 second spots that introduce the new Smokey Chipotle Fried Chicken.  The commercials'€™ voiceover describes the new recipe as "€œflavor with a kick," and it ends with the slogan, "Life tastes better with KFC."

KFC has no plans to include an Internet ad campaign, but that's not to say that they are ignoring the online medium.  On their Web site, KFC created a game, "Quest for the Golden Chipotle," which was created to educate consumers about the origin of the chipotle pepper while still being fun and interactive.

Will the addition of a rare new menu flavor be enough to catapult KFC into the top 10 Most Memorable New Products list?

The Sprint Instinct: A for Effort

The new Sprint Instinct has launched, and to most consumers it will be seen as another iPhone copy-cat that has more cons than pros. Despite this, one thing is for sure – Sprint is certainly trying. This week Sprint launched the “Sell Out with Sprint” video campaign, which asks consumers to send in the “greatest product placement movie of all time.” The campaign is asking users to create home and post home videos to YouTube, using the Instinct as obvious product placement. The first 1,000 videos will receive $25 from Sprint.

 According to the campaigns creative director, Christian Haas, the slogan “Sell Out with Sprint” is asking users to "Sell out Hollywood style, letting your integrity go, for cold hard cash." The way I see it, this campaign is a low risk, high reward tactic. It gives Sprint a chance to reach out to consumers and offers them the chance to be creative. Sprint could have just continued running a series of ads featuring reasons why it is better than the iPhone, but there’s the who cares factor. Nobody will buy the Instinct over the iPhone, just because the internet might be a little faster or because it might be slightly more petite; the iPhone is the 800 pound guerilla that will not be taken down, especially now that it costs only $199.

Haas got it right when he said, “We needed to be able to talk about the features with a sense of humor because the iPhone is one of the most desired products that has come out in a long time. We needed a platform that we can talk about the features without being an infomercial.” Sprint might not be the best product available, but that is not always what will makes a product memorable. If this campaign can catch fire, and cause a stir in the media and online, it will give the Instinct a lift to possibly become a Most Memorable product for 2008.

The contest runs through August 1^st, and the finalists will be voted on and picked by August 8^th. After that, the public will pick a winner, and voting will end August 22^nd.

Are you willing to participate for $25?

Most Memorable New Product Launch Nominee: Pepsi Tava

Launch Date: February 26, 2008

PepsiCo is taking an unusual approach to launching its new no-calorie, vitamin-enhanced sparkling beverage, Tava. The fruit-flavored drink, which is enhanced with vitamins E, B6, niacin and chromium, will be supported solely by online promotions and advertising and an offline sampling campaign—bypassing completely the print and television advertising the brand has traditionally used to launch new products.

 What makes this strategy more curious is Tava is targeted at “primetimers”—men and women 35 to 49, not a group known for going online. However, as Pepsi notes in The New York Times, there’s a segment of that category that is “reborn digital” and that spends significant time online, mostly e-mailing and looking up information about travel, music and food.

Pepsi will try to drive these consumers to a microsite for Tava (www.tava.com) through banner ads on sites such as AOL, CHOW.com, CitySearch, Daily Candy and Evite. Once at the site, users can download songs from emerging musicians, look at the work of up-and-coming artists and find information about arts events such as the Boston Arts Festival and Shakespeare in the Park. As Christian Dietrich of Pepsi-Cola agency Tribal DDB explains, “If Tava was a person, this is what he or she would be into.”

 Offline, Pepsi is giving away free samples of the product at the events featured on the site, as well as providing samples to employees of companies like Apple, Bliss Spa, Google and MTV.

 With this bottom-up marketing strategy, Pepsi is hoping to create an emotional connection with consumers and turn them into brand ambassadors. While it would be particularly effective if people at influential companies like Apple and MTV shared the product with their constituents, Pepsi risks failing to capture mainstream awareness by avoiding traditional advertising in their launch. As we noted in last year’s Most Memorable New Product Launch survey, all of the top 10 product launches in the 2007 study benefited from significant television support.

Brandweek also notes that Pepsi seems to have changed their messaging with Tava, moving away from any reference to weight-loss benefits associated with chronmium, which is found in Tava. This follows the disappointing launch of Enviga, a sparkling green tea drink from Coca-Cola and Nestle, which is supposed to burn calories. Enviga triggered a lawsuit from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and, by the end of 2007, was left with only a 0.5 share in the ready-to-drink tea category.

With the successful launch of vitamin-infused Diet Coke Plus (#7 on last year’s Most Memorable list) and the rising popularity of “functional drinks,” Pepsi is hoping Tava succeeds where previous attempts at “healthful soda,” such as the 2004 launch of 7Up Plus by Cadbury Schwepps, have failed. However, the same criticism that arose with Diet Coke Plus—that it actually only contains a tiny fraction of recommended daily values of the vitamins it contains—has also come up with Tava, which provides just 10 percent of daily values for vitamins B & E—even less than Coke’s offering. Additionally, Pepsi’s previous attempts at a TV-less launch have also failed—Pepsi One debuted without television support in 2005.

Do you think PepsiCo’s unconventional launch strategy will help Tava make the desired emotional connection with consumers?

Most Memorable New Product Launch Nominee: Gatorade G2

Launch Date: September 7, 2007

Faced with the steady decline in sales of carbonated drinks, Pepsi Co is looking to make a splash with Gatorade G2, the brand’s biggest product launch in six years. G2, a new low-calorie version of Gatorade, is being marketed as an “off-the-field hydrator,” designed for athletes to drink when they’re not training or competing.

The launch is being supported by a massive integrated marketing campaign, as Pepsi hopes to make an impression amongst the hundreds of beverages that launch yearly in the US.  Besides a prominent television ad campaign, G2 is also being promoted with print advertising, digital components, retail, sampling and cause-marketing efforts.

G2 was announced in early September 2007, but didn’t hit stores until early 2008. Fifteen-second teaser ads showing unknown pairs of legs walking through a city that slowly morphs into a baseball field and a basketball court, started appearing in December.

The full length ads, created by Element 79 Partners in Chicago, are set to debut during Super Bowl XLII. The agency explains that the ads are meant to show that many times the game extends beyond the field and into a sports player’s everyday life. The spots reveal that the legs in the teasers actually belong to Miami Heat’s Dwayne Wade and New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter, who appeared saying “The next game begins when the last one ends.”

The ads are part of a larger marketing effort launching G2 and will also include spots starring Peyton Manning and Maria Sharapova.  Although the Jeter and Wade ads weren’t supposed to premiere until the Super Bowl, a 30-second preview version of Jeter’s spot has already been released online. Jeter also hyped the launch at a press event in Manhattan this week.  Here’s the ad Gatorade will use to launch G2 in the Super Bowl:

Gatorade has actually tried to sell a low-calorie drink before, Gatorade Light, which failed to gain an audience when it launched in 1990.

With today’s consumers looking for more drink options, do you think G2 will succeed where Gatorade Light failed?