Culinary Feat - KitchenAid's marketing strategy

American Demographics, March 1, 2001 by Alison Stein Wellner

Byline: ALISON STEIN WELLNER

FOR WANNABE CHEFS, PICTURES SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. THE MEMO Golden baked bread, steaming hot from the oven. Cool banana smoothie, sweet and thick. Glistening strawberries baked into a flaky pastry crust. For people who love to cook, the act of creating food like this is a high art, and appliances are as important as ingredients in achieving perfection.

Since 1919, KitchenAid has been a part of the counter culinary scene, affixing its name to the mixers and other appliances whose very presence signal that there's more than microwave dinners cooking in that kitchen. Best known for its StandMixer, the company also markets a full line of small and large kitchen appliances, including dishwashers and refrigerators.

In 1999, the counter-top appliance division of the company was whirring along with the hot economy, as spending on premium products for the home soared. But sales for the company's larger appliances were sinking. The KitchenAid team had to figure out a way to transfer brand equity from its small-appliance division to its large appliances - and they had to do it without increasing their marketing budget.

THE DISCOVERY The team started with an analysis of eight years worth of warranty cards for all of their products, and of Greenwich, Connecticut-based research firm NFO Worldwide's household panel database, replenished each quarter by 40,000 households. The KitchenAid crew learned that across all products, their brand signified "high quality" to customers, but that only their counter-top line of appliances had the reputation for innovation. They'd have to convince small-appliance customers to think big.

KitchenAid commissioned the Chicago-based Doblin Group to execute a battery of ethnographic studies, which included more than 200 consumer observations. The key discovery: Consumers weren't interested in the appliance for the appliance's sake. They were interested in what the appliance could do for them - help them to prepare delicious food and be able to entertain friends and family while serving their culinary creations.

To confirm and quantify these results, KitchenAid returned to NFO for a segmentation study. The team realized that its best bet was to focus on "the culinary-involved," a segment of consumers who were heavy users of kitchen appliances, and who believed in using the best products for their homes. These wannabe chefs are passionate about cooking, and most important to KitchenAid, the segment cut across all demographic groups: It wasn't confined to upper-income households.

THE TACTICS Consumers actively use magazines to plan for their major appliance purchases, often tearing pages out of home and lifestyle magazines to file away for ideas and inspiration, so KitchenAid planned a print-only campaign. One ad created by N.W. Ayer, based in New York City, features a picture of lemon souffle pancakes dominating more than three-quarters of one page. The pancakes are drizzled in a creamy lemon sauce and topped with raspberries. On the page facing the picture, beneath the smaller images of the large and small appliances that helped to prepare the dish, the text invites the reader to click on to the company's Web site for the recipe. These ads ran in 59 publications, ranging from Architectural Digest to People.

THE PAYOFF After the first six months of 2000, when the campaign started, sales for both countertop and major appliances were showing "double-digit growth" according to the company. In the first two months of the campaign, contacts to KitchenAid's 800 number and its Web site are up more than three times what they were over a year ago and hit rates to the site were up nearly 60 percent. Most satisfying: The marketing team produced these results using 64 percent of its budget from the previous year - and without use of a television ad presence. In cooking, less is more. The same may also be true in kitchen appliance advertising.

Product KitchenAid Advertising Agency N.W. Ayer Research Companies Doblin Group, NFO, Sheskin Research, Gallup and Robinson, Millward Brown