Marketers try to promote value without cheapening image
— -- Here's a telling sign about the state of our economy: The folks behind those milk mustache ads with glamorous celebrities such as Brooke Shields and Beyoncé Knowles now are featuring financial adviser Suze Orman.
"Milk your budget" say the fresh print ads. A white-mustached Orman appears next to text about moo juice's "great value" at about 25 cents per 8-ounce glass.
"Gas is up. Energy is up. The cost of all food products is going up. And disposable income, for many people, is down," says Kurt Graetzer, CEO of the Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP), which is funded by the nation's dairies. "Fewer items are actually making it in the shopping basket."
In an October survey, BIGresearch found 47% of consumers have become more budget-conscious in the past six months.
Faced with those facts and slightly declining sales, the milk board opted to highlight the drink's spare-change cost.
"The troubled economy has created a new way of looking at milk," says Graetzer. "We're still talking nutrients, but we're talking in the context of what's happening to the American pocketbook."
As consumers increasingly put a death grip on their dollars, marketers of food and packaged goods — even household staples such as milk, cereal, soup and laundry detergent — are wrangling with how to make their products into shopping basket survivors.
New campaigns for the new Total Care versions of P&G's Tide detergent and Downy fabric softener — which claim to be better at preserving clothes' new look — emphasize value payback: If garments stay in good shape longer, consumers won't have to buy as many new ones. And since Total Care is gentle, consumers can safely machine wash clothes that they otherwise would have to pay to dry clean.
Shopper gloom — consumer confidence in October was the lowest on record, according to the Conference Board — is just one hurdle marketers face. Higher costs for ingredients, packaging and transportation are squeezing profits, but penny-pinching shoppers make price increases risky.
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