What first attracted Kraft Heinz to multimillionaire megastar Oprah Winfrey? One suspects the fmcg giant’s newly announced tie-up with the Oscar-nominated media mogul was down to the Oprah effect – Winfrey’s eldritch gift for influencing public opinion and consumer purchasing choices.
It would be hard to overstate how canny it’s been of Kraft to get Oprah onside for a US joint venture called Mealtime Stories – a new brand designed to “make real, nutritious products more accessible to everyone”. The initial offer will comprise chilled ready meals across multiple categories – and, in keeping with OW’s famed philanthropy, 10% of profits will be donated to charities aimed at eradicating hunger.
The launch of Mealtime Stories is not just canny. It’s bold, too. Making ready meals that will sell isn’t the easiest job these days: to a growing number of shoppers processed equals unpalatable.
Take, as a sort of bellwether, WeightWatchers’ performance in the UK. In spite of being a healthier option in chillers and freezers, its ready meals – some of which are made by Kraft – slipped 15% (£6.7m) in value sales last year [Nielsen 52 w/e 8 October 2016]. Indeed, the brand, formerly owned by the Heinz company as was, is part of a category more or less kept in the black singlehandedly by Iceland’s Slimming World range.
Over in the States, however, WeightWatchers has, in the parlance of that country, gone gangbuster – at least on the stock exchange. And it’s been down to, yes, the Oprah effect. Ms Winfrey took a 10% share in the autumn of 2015, which led to the brand’s market value more than doubling in a day, the FT reported at the time. And the Pink ‘Un revealed last month that WW’s shares surged by as much as 18% after it announced the chat show queen had lost 40lbs using its programme.
That’s what Kraft now has to look forward to, because Oprah’s eerie power over consumers rarely betrays her. There’s no reason UK suppliers shouldn’t reach across the Atlantic to feel some the residual effects in an effort to bolster our wobbly ready meals category, either. It’s just a shame Winfrey no longer hosts her TV show: we’ll never see her audience reach under their seats to each whip out a frozen Thai green curry.
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