Bürgen challenges Vogels to a “Which tastes better?” battle

Bürgen® challenges Vogels to a “Which tastes better?” battle

Auckland, 20 February, 2015 – This weekend sees the opening rounds of a contest between the current title holder and a former champ making a strong comeback. But the contest won’t take place on a sports field. It will be fought and won in the hearts, minds and taste buds of Kiwi families. Bürgen® is laying down a serious challenge to the incumbent market leader in premium bread, asking the question: which tastes better?

For Bürgen it’s a classic case of going back to basics and focusing on taste and quality. Bürgen launched in the 1980s with a mixed grain recipe with strong appeal and quickly became New Zealand’s leading premium bread, a position it held until the early 1990s. And when a fire in the bakery of George Weston Foods caused a hiccup in production, Vogels swooped.

George Weston Foods rebuilt the bakery, but couldn’t recapture the lead. Successive advertising campaigns failed to make a lasting impact. That was until last year, when the company launched the striking “Bürgen Virgin” media campaign. Key success metrics include:

• 14% $ value sales growth for Bürgen (excluding Gluten Free) – making it the fastest growing premium brand in 2014.[1]

• +82,300 new households buying Bürgen[2]

• 13% more spend & 12% more trips per shopper[3]

While heartening, it wasn’t enough to topple the champ. But social media revealed a chink in Vogels’ armour. Even in breadmaking, change is constant, and innovations in production techniques and adjustments to recipes have altered the taste and mouth appeal of Vogels. Noticeably so.

“We first recognised a change in sentiment when we noticed people on Facebook complaining that Vogels just didn’t taste the same,” says Mark Adam, NZ General Manager, Baking Division for George Weston Foods. “We saw that as an opportunity to make a move.”

To address the opportunity George Weston decided not so much to innovate as to resurrect, playing to Bürgen’s core strengths, which are around nutrition and variety – lots of grains, seeds and additional ingredients.

“We responded by going back to our roots, bringing back to life one of our original bread recipes to help get us back in front. We’ve returned to where it all began to bring people a modern take on our classic Mixed Grain recipe. Our “new” Original Mixed Grain loaf is once again beautifully made. It delivers a unique and mouth-watering crunch when toasted, and a nutty and flavoursome sandwich experience.

Once the initial development was complete the company asked consumers to compare the two loaves based on moistness, texture, density, grains and smell. The results were unequivocal: in branded and unbranded testing Bürgen won hands down in every measure except size of slice.

The campaign will launch on television backed up with strategic strikes online and in social media (an appropriate medium as that where the insight and inspiration arose). And ground troops will be deployed where consumers gather in numbers.

The campaign launches this weekend.

About George Weston Foods

George Weston Foods is one of New Zealand’s largest manufacturers of bread and bakery products. Launched in the early 1950s, following the purchase of Stormont’s Bakery in Kingsland, the company today produces over 1.2 million loaves of bread, buns, rolls, muffins, and crumpets each week under the Tip Top, Bürgen, Ploughman’s, Big Ben, Golden and Bazaar. George Weston Foods is part of Associated British Foods plc (ABF), an international food, ingredients and retail group with sales of £13.3bn and over 113,000 employees in 47 countries.

________________________________________

[1] Aztec scan data MAT to 11th Jan 2015

[2] Nielsen Homescan Data MAT to 2nd November 2014

[3] Nielsen Homescan Data MAT to 2nd November 2014

© Scoop Media