Marketing Dialogue Is A Means, Not An End

The recent repositioning of Miracle Whip as the hip, revolutionary mover and shaker of the condiment world ends up pointing out the limits of dialogue marketing, the two-way conversation with customers that we’re all supposed to be pledging allegiance to these days.

Not your mother’s mayonnaise
It all started with a radically-new advertising campaign, with Miracle Whip claiming that they’re no longer the ingredient choice of grandmothers making lime jello vegetable salad. (The familiar “not your father’s Oldsmobile” ploy.) Miracle Whip says they “will not be quiet” and is “not like the others” and “will not tone it down.”

Instead of making claims about what their product can do (“build strong bodies twelve ways,” “5X more 3G coverage,” “highest in customer satisfaction” and so forth), Miracle Whip is trying to gain credibility by manipulating our beliefs about who their product is. In other words, the fat jar of white stuff that pretends to be mayonnaise is now pretending to be the coolest person in the world.

Trying too hard
Sorry, doesn’t work for me, and I doubt very much it works for the younger demographic they’re evidently trying to reach. I feel like I’ve met one of those unfortunate souls who just try too hard to make a good impression. Their fashion sense is slightly skewed. They speak as if they’re using a recently-acquired second language. And they seem to have learned about the world by reading People magazine.

You can tell they’re uncomfortable in their ill-chosen role: this in turn makes people around them uncomfortable. Think of your parents with tattoos and multiple piercings, or think Rick Moranis as Sigourney Weaver’s tragically unhip accountant neighbor in Ghostbusters.

All of this has been covered in the marketing and advertising press and blogs. It seemed like yet another case of repositioning gone wrong, of brand and reality occupying two different planets. But then:
•    One night Stephen Colbert lambasted the Miracle Whip campaign.
•    Miracle Whip immediately responded with new ads, including commercials on Colbert.
•    Colbert thanked them for the ad revenue.
•    Twitter was full of comments about Miracle Whip vs. Colbert.

Now Miracle Whip claims their new repositioning was a big success because it generated “dialogue.”

Stop talking, start eating
Dialogue about what? At what price? Is Miracle Whip claiming they intentionally made their brand look ridiculous, just to provoke people into talking about them? The repositioning is still absurd. And there’s still no benefit claim – what the product can do for you. This is supposed to be about getting people to buy and eat your product, not just talk about it.

Maybe mustard could get away with this. Grey Poupon did, with “Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?” But not mayonnaise, and certainly not imitation mayonnaise.

Tags: dialogue, mayonnaise, Miracle Whip, positioning, Stephen Colbert

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Cool/Funny/Unusual, Fred Petrick, brand development. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.