Maggi cooks up major makeover
The Age
Friday April 1, 2011
LIKE a lot of 40-somethings, the Maggi brand has had a good look in the mirror and decided it's out of date. This weekend, Maggi will start introducing new product lines, revamped packing and a $10 million marketing campaign to support the makeover.A lot has changed in 40 years in the world of the home cook, and Maggi says its new products and variations will better reflect contemporary tastes in flavours and cooking styles, including more ethnically diverse dishes.Nestle's general manager of food, Mark Mackaness, said the company had underspent on Maggi for several years but through restructuring was now able to "invest back behind the brand".He said research over the past 18 months had revealed just how tired the brand was. But he said Maggi still had a high level of trust among consumers.Research, which included getting people to fill in meal diaries and observing people cooking at home, looked at cooking habits, how people shopped, cooking styles and where and when people got inspiration for deciding what to cook that night.Mr Mackaness said a key part of the marketing campaign would be increasing Maggi's presence online, based on the large number of people who now turned to the internet for ideas on what to cook.He said there would be big changes to packaging for all products in the range, which includes noodles, sauces and stocks, as well as new flavours to bring products up to date."We're moving with the times," he said. " We're showing that in the category of meal bases, for example, it's about a lot more than casseroles. There's been a big push towards slow cooking. We have a range that suits pressure cookers, which are making a rapid rise back."Maggi was launched in Australia about 40 years ago with a range of stock cubes and recipe bases.Mr Mackaness said a key aim of the campaign was to show people how Maggi could be part of a wide range of mealchoices."We've got a lot of work to do to bring consumers back to Maggi," he said. "But we've also found that Maggi has inherent trust, so there's a great foundation to build on."
© 2011 The Age