Louise Marsland (@Louise_Marsland)’s weekly pick of recent product, packaging and design launches:
- Oreo is set to transform its brand this weekend
- Cluck, Cluck… a new chicken franchise launches
- Tsogo Sun does it with Vigour & Verve, and
- an eco-storage solution in Cape Town sets a benchmark
Oreo transforms
Billed as a “world-first”, Oreo launched its 3D chalk Oreo display this month to promote its partnership with Paramount Pictures for the global release of director Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction, releasing in South Africa this Friday. The impactful 3D sketch was created in collaboration with local artist Mak1One at The Zone, Rosebank.
Oreo has really gone all out with this movie deal, launching a global TV commercial also directed by Michael Bay, Transformers-themed Oreo cookies, in store activity, point-of-sale activations, digital and social media surrounding this all — and they are covering 35 countries with the campaign promotion.
The 3D rendering for Oreo is incredible and Mak1One is an artist to take note of: born in Mitchell’s Plain, he has been expressing himself via graffiti art for over two decades. He has already produced works of art for Ted Ex Cape Town 2012, the 2004 Olympics in Greece, 2012 Gold Urban Art Festival Johannesburg, and various other events across the world.
Mondelez South Africa says it wanted to engage with local Oreo fans in a “playful and memorable way”. Explains Tasmin Darroch, category leader: biscuits, beverages and groceries at Mondelez: “It was delightful to watch as the small iconic biscuit came to life with the 3D chalk sketch. We wanted to showcase to fans how big of a brand the little OREO biscuit is, so big in fact it walks alongside the Transformers!”
Look out for the activity in stores and a movie theatre near you this weekend and follow the activity at #OreoSA.
Tsogo gets vigorous
Tsogo Sun has made a significant investment in a selection of new food and beverage brands that will be rolled out across various venues within the group’s gaming, entertainment and hotels portfolio. The first one is the launch of its Vigour & Verve (V&V) coffee shop brand — ‘coffee and everything in between’ restaurants that take Tsogo Sun into the competitive retail coffee shop sector.
Says Louise Sevel, group brand manager, Tsogo Sun: “We have 85 restaurant brands across the group — and establishing our own brands, in preference to partnering with established brands, will substantially strengthen and provide a greater level of control to our food and beverage offering.
“We looked at internationally-acceptable industry trends and came up with a brand that is, in essence, light-hearted, attractive and comfortable.It’s also an accessible brand across different age and income groups, and across business and leisure needs. Colours are black and white with accents of red throughout, and the décor is appealing and warm, featuring tactile touches like the floor-to-ceiling abacus in some of the venues for people to play with as added entertainment and the eye-catching carved wooden ceiling panel in the Pietermaritzburg restaurant.”
Vigour & Verve restaurants are being positioned prominently near the entrance in selected hotels, where they will encourage walk-in customers, as well as residents of the hotel. At this stage, V&V restaurants have been opened in the Southern Sun Elangeni & Maharani Hotel in Durban, in Southern Sun Pietermaritzburg in the Golden Horse Casino complex, and a smaller version, Café Vigour, at SunCoast Casino in Durban. Two more will be rolling out this year — at Gold Reef City in Johannesburg and at Silverstar Casino on the West Rand.
Get your chicken crispy
FreshStop convenience stores are busy rolling out the new Crispy Chicken takeaway brand as its new in-house fast-food brand. The first Crispy Chicken launched at the Caltex Stellendale FreshStop in Kuils River, followed by Paarl and another five are planned for a nationwide rollout this year.
“We have received very encouraging feedback from our customers and our sales figures reflect how popular the product has become over the last four months,” says Craig Davis, FreshStop new category development manager. “Our decision to launch the Crispy Chicken concept within our FreshStop stores stemmed from us wanting to provide our customers with an enhanced product offering. In this way, we improve the choice they have and better their convenience shopping experience. As consumers have less time to shop, ready-to-eat and freshly prepared product is the way to go.”
FreshStop, which has a network of 162 stores nationwide, is actually owned by the Fruit & Veg City group, also responsible for the successful Food Lovers’ Market franchise.
“Crispy Chicken is a proprietary brand, created and designed specifically for FreshStop, and it has been a winning formula so far. Trading from just 5m2 in a low volume store with very little marketing, the concept has been able to generate over and above a 50% gross profit. For this reason, our expectations for our higher trading stores are very high,” adds Joe Boyle, FreshStop director.
“Convenience retail brands must have a solid food-service strategy to be successful in today’s rapidly changing retail environment and our chicken concept forms part of this future view of our business,” says Boyle.
It is refreshing to see continued innovation in the dynamic and world-class retail sector in South Africa.
Setting eco benchmarks
This is the future for utility commercial space: partnering with NGOs to serve the community in which it takes up space, as well as ensuring that it leaves a benign environmental footprint. GreenCube Self Storage claims to be the first commercial property in Africa to use eco-friendly infrastructure, such as insulated concrete formwork (ICF), for its new facility in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs, in Ottery.
This green, insulated building technique offers the added benefit of even year-round temperatures to protect valued stored goods, thereby reducing the facilities carbon footprint.
The facility has also joined forces with various green initiatives such as Abalimi-Harvest of Hope — an organisation dedicated to urban agriculture and environmental support in townships such as Khayelitsha and Nyanga. Abalimi assists individuals, groups and communities to initiate and maintain permanent organic food growing, which allow farmers to develop skills, feed themselves, their families and provide regular income.
GreenCube will purchase a vegetable plant from Abalimi, for each storage unit that is leased, to be given to the customer — to ensure customers feel good knowing that they, too, are giving back to the community.
In addition, GreenCube has partnered with the tree-planting social enterprise Greenpop, to assist with its ongoing storage needs. Greenpop brings together communities and corporates to run urban greening and reforestation projects in South Africa and Zambia, and has planted over 40 000 trees to date.
“GreenCube aims to promote a variety of community projects, and in doing so hopes to make a positive impact in the lives of both our customers and those less fortunate,” says Steve Ruffel of GreenCube.
Shelf Life is a weekly column by Louise Marsland on MarkLives. Tweet new product, packaging and design launches to @louise_marsland or email her at louise.marsland at gmail.com. Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.
Louise has written about the FMCG, media, marketing and advertising industry for 19 of her more-than-25-year career as a former editor of magazines AdVantage, Marketing Mix and Progressive Retailing, as well as websites Bizcommunity.com and FMCGFiles. Until its cancellation, she edited the weekly Wednesday Media & Marketing Page for The New Age newspaper. She is currently the publishing editor of industry trendwatching portal, TRENDAFRiCA,for consumer insight, research and trends in Africa.
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