Smucker’s shares cat product development methods

ORRVILLE, OHIO– Rob Ferguson, basic supervisor of animal food and snacks for The J.M. Smucker Company, highlighted strategies driving its cat product portfolio as part of a series of videos published by the company.

The company’s feline food service was a strong growth driver in Smucker’s fiscal year 2020, following “a period of softness” in the category, Ferguson said.In the company video, titled “Reinvigorating Our Feline Food Company,” Ferguson discussed Smucker’s well-established brand names and how the business is working to keep them fresh and innovative in the eyes of customers.

“I think the genuine difficulty that we face in our feline food portfolio is just the truth that we have iconic brands, but we weren’t always meaningfully investing in them,” Ferguson said in the video.

He used Smucker’s Meow Mix brand as an example.

“While Meow Mix has actually been the brand cats request by name for more than 40 years, sales development had actually slowed, and we recognized there were chances to support greater top-of-mind awareness and preference,” Ferguson stated.

“The concern that we faced was that we needed to continue to make the brand name fresh,” he continued. “And making it fresh requires us to deliver on 2 pledges: the pledge of development marketing, and the guarantee on innovation. On both of those fronts, we’ve done a really nice task over the last number of years.”

The business launched a marketing project remixing the traditional Meow Mix jingle “to make the brand new and relevant to both old and lapsed customers, along with a new customer base,” Ferguson described.

The jingle was remade in an R&B design, as a nation song, a heavy metal tune and in a “danceable” Latin style. Each brand-new jingle comes with an elaborate backstory explaining the imaginary musical feline artists behind the new jingles.

Ferguson also discussed item innovation that drove growth for the Meow Mix brand, including Meow Mix Tender Center and Tender Centers Basted Bites.

“Our investments helped us grow the brand more than 6% year-over-year and positioned us to understand continual incremental development,” Ferguson stated.

“I think what’s most amazing about our feline food portfolio is just the fact that we play in every meaningful space within the category– whether it’s value in 9Lives, whether it’s mainstream with Meow Mix, or whether it’s premium with Nutrish– all 3 of those brand names have revealed meaningful growth [in fiscal 2020], and we have reason to believe that they’re all going to continue growing as we look into the future,” Ferguson stated.

He included the business prepares to continue innovating in its Nutrish and 9Lives brands, with the intro of brand-new Nutrish feline treats, which Ferguson described a “a substantial area of chance that we believe the brand name is uniquely placed to support.”

“The future couldn’t be anymore intense for our overall feline food company,” Ferguson concluded.