Jacob’s recruits Blur’s cheesemaking Alex James as it looks to position itself as a lunchtime option
Jacob’s Crackers is hoping to own a bite of the lunchtime category by taking on the humble sandwich in a new campaign fronted by Blur bassist and farm owner Alex James.
In what Jacob’s is billing as its “heaviest weight social media spend” to date the #CrackinDiscoveries digital campaign is an extension of the brand’s £15m Crackin’ campaign that it launched at the beginning of the year - its largest in more than ten years.
The idea is to position Jacob’s range of crackers, which include a variety inspired by the flavours of artisanal Italian bread, as a lighter alternative to eating sandwiches at lunch time. The campaign film stars James and shows the former bassist creating new pairings and combinations, such as fresh tomatoes and olive oil, at his home.
Speaking to The Drum, Jacob’s savoury marketing director, Ted Linehan, said that the idea for the new lunchtime positioning was generated following a discussion about how to grow the business further.
“Although we are the leader in our category, we weren’t the leader at lunch time. We then started looking at how to improve our position at that time of day and we got very quickly into the idea of so many lunches being based on sandwiches but a lot of consumers are falling out of love with bread. It doesn’t mean they want to cut bread out of their diet, but even one or two days a week they are looking for something different, or a little bit lighter and we were of the view that is something that we can do.”
Research carried out by Jacob’s found that 1 in 3 people surveyed are “utterly bored” by their everyday sandwich with more than half seeking new and tasty ideas (55 per cent), having something quick and easy to prepare (61 per cent) and wanting something budget-friendly (58 per cent) as key considerations when it comes to choosing their lunch.
But the latest push also has another facet to it; the brand is hoping to shift perceptions of Jacob’s crackers as “something Grandma wheels out at Christmas” into a modern brand with appeal to a wide demographic of people.
“I think the challenge for Jacobs, and the reason that we are doing all of this, not just this campaign, is we want to move from being a brand that is trusted by people to a brand that is trusted by people and loved by people,” added Linehan. “I’m not saying it is unloved but its trust scores are way higher than its love scores. That’s not something that will happen overnight but I certainly want to see us within 12 months really starting to see that particular KPI moving in the right direction.”
For the #CrackinDiscoveries campaign Jacobs will create a series of videos starring James as he creates different toppings and pairings. They will be shot in real-time to show consumers the speed with which they can create a lunch using the brand, and be pushed out on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
The campaign launches next month and will run for the next year.
Video produced by Katie Deighton