Changing the game in microwave popcorn

As the microwave popcorn category leader, ConAgra Foods has been digging deep to understand the major barriers that have been preventing category growth in recent years. What did it learn? Microwave popcorn is not top of mind for 42 percent of shoppers¹, a key insight that is driving ConAgra Foods to launch multiple product, packaging and promotional innovations to change the game in microwave popcorn.

Things got started last November with Orville Redenbacher's® Holiday Redbox Movie Night promotion which led a microwave popcorn category increase heading into 2011. Repeat purchases and household penetration grew², due to thousands of secondary displays. The two-month event featured two free Redbox DVD rentals in a 3-pack and four in a six-pack. An integrated Shopper Marketing campaign also included savings on collateral purchases of soda and Poppycock gourmet popcorn, an FSI, an enhanced online presence, and coupon dispensers in the popcorn aisle.

More high-impact ideas from ConAgra Foods should generate even more consumer pull:

• Big Game Pop & Win promotion. Shoppers buying for the Super Bowl on Feb. 6 got a chance at $8 million in prizes. To drive fast consumption and repurchases, bags popped in microwave ovens revealed a heat-sensitive code for prizes redeemable online. Results are being tallied, but when this event ran previously in Canada, 42 percent of Pop & Win purchasers made additional salty snack purchases.³

• Orville Redenbacher's New Pop Up Bowl™ will stoke college basketball fans during March Madness and change the game in microwave popcorn packaging. This item brings consumers what they've wanted all along—the great aroma and taste of popcorn paired with easier snacking, sharing and clean-up. The microwave bag pops open to become a sturdy, stand-up, wide-mouth bowl for instant serving with two transparent walls that let kids of all ages watch the popcorn pop as it rotates in the microwave.

• Act II Authentic Mexican Flavors launch. Bringing two popular flavors to the U.S.—Salsa Valentina® (a spicy salsa brand popular in Mexico which ConAgra Foods licenses) and Queso Jalapeno—for the Act II brand will appeal to Hispanics, 88 percent⁴ of whom say that "foods and recipes from my cultural background have a special place in my heart."

¹ ConAgra Foods Proprietary Microwave Popcorn Barrier Study, April 2010
² Shopper card data from a leading U.S. retailer, 9 weeks ended Jan. 1, 2011
³ Orville Redenbacher's Brand Health Study, Fall 2009, Wave 7
⁴ Yankelovich Inc. d/b/a The Futures Company, 2009; Latinum Network analysis

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