Seasonal Food Marketing

Effective and Loved by Consumers

When you think of winter what do you think about?  Maybe Christmas, red and green colors, snow, snowmen, presents, trees, New Year’s. etc.

What do you think about when you hear the word “spring”? Probably lots of pastel colors, Easter, Easter bunny, flowers, rain, etc.

How about summer? Possibly sunshine, beaches, pools, Fourth of July, etc.

Last but not least, fall? Changing leaves, browns, oranges, and reds, football, etc.

Each season reminds you of something.  All of these “somethings” can be used to market your product.

Seasonal food marketing is an effective way to keep customers interested in your brand or product and to score placement in grocery stores.  There are many strategies for seasonal food marketing including seasonal packaging and seasonal flavors or product.  I’m going to tell you how these strategies can help your brand.

Seasonal Packaging:

There are two brands that instantly come to my mind when I think about seasonal packaging: Oreos and Reese’s.  As a kid, I always would remember getting the cool packages of Oreos instead of the regular one.  These are fun and catch the customer’s attention but do not change the actual product.  Customers love being festive, so they are more likely to grab the decorative packaging instead of the classic one!

Image © Amazon

Seasonal flavors:

Now, when it comes to seasonal flavors, I automatically think of M&M’s.  There are so many flavors of M&M’s in general, but they also have quite the array of seasonal flavors.  Seasonal flavors give off the limited edition/limited amount vibe.  This makes customers want to grab them while they can.  Traditional flavors associated with seasons such as pumpkin in the fall or peppermint in the winter are always a safe bet.

Image © M&M’s

Both:

If there is one company that, in my mind, does an extremely great job using both seasonal packaging and flavors, it is definitely Starbucks.  They have seasonal flavors every year and the cutest seasonal cups in the winter.  They are absolutely killing it.

Image © Starbucks

What it does:

Seasonal food marketing is extremely effective.  Seasonal flavors are obviously going to have seasonal packaging, so they definitely go hand in hand. There are definitely some products that cannot do seasonal flavors, so packaging is a great strategy for them.  So what exactly can these strategies do for you? For starters, a lot of stores have seasonal displays out where they mainly use seasonal or decorative packaging.  By adding a little color or seasonal aspects, whether it is changing the colors to fall colors, or adding snow, using seasonal packaging can really increase shelf space and get your product front and center.  “Seasonal” or “limited edition” also catch your customers’ eye; they do not want to miss out on something limited.  I know I would rather grab a cute bag of M&M’s with a Santa hat than just the regular brown bag.  Overall, seasonal marketing is very effective and loved by customers.

To learn more about getting your product on the shelf of grocery stores everywhere or if you have any questions,  please reach out to the NewPoint team. If you are interested in more food marketing topics, please visit our Food for Thought page or check out NewPoint’s Patrick Nycz’s book: Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain.