Which grocery brands do Millennials like the most?

December 16, 2015

|

By John Karolefski

Makers of food and beverage brands are feverishly trying to figure out the best way to market to Millennials. After all, this demographic group – defined as those born between 1980 and 2002 – will be buying a lot of groceries when they start families, if they haven’t done so already. The idea is to make them brand loyal to a can, bag, box or bottle of certain edibles and drinkables.

   

Which brands do Millennials like the most today, and why?

A survey from ad agency Moosylvania set out to find some answers. For the past three years, they asked about 3,500 Millennial to name their favorite brands. The results was a list of 100 brands from such areas as clothing, technology and retail, as well as food and beverage. The research rounded up the usual suspects: Apple (selected as number one), Nike (2), Samsung (3), Sony (4), Microsoft (5), and other cool and engaging brands.

What about food and beverages sold in grocery stores? There were ten of these brands on the list of 100: Coca-Cola (10), Pepsi (15), Frito-Lay (34), Kellogg's (44), Hershey (47), Dr Pepper (50), Kraft (58), Mountain Dew (60), General Mills (88), and Nestle (98).

Millennials were asked what brands were doing to gain their loyalty. They said -- get ready for this -- they liked being entertained with apps, videos, games and contests online. They study found that by a margin of six to one, Millennials prefer fun and entertaining content to news and information in their social feeds with brands. "Entertainment provides a natural opportunity for a brand to connect as shareable content," said Norty Cohen, CEO of Mooslvania. "When a brand doesn't take itself too seriously, but instead provides fun that can be shared, it works."

Here's how some grocery brands on the list are offering fun in an attempt to snag the interest of Millennials:

• Nestlé’s Nescafe created “social art” in Croatia by locking their iconic red mugs all over the city on bridges, walkways, park benches, etc.  Consumers were driven to the brand’s Facebook page for a four-digit code to unlock the mugs. This, Moosylvania says, appealed to Millennials. This, I say, is what passes for fun in Croatia. 
• Frito-Lay encouraged fans of Lay’s potato chips to make customizable potato chip bags. Chippers (my word, not theirs) could upload and caption a photo to receive a digital version of a personalized Lay’s potato chip bag. The resulting photo could then be shared via social media with friends, family and stalkers.
• Hershey’s took a simple approach. The chocolate maker encouraged Millennials to comment on Facebook with #FeedYourFancy. That would give them a chance to win a $300 Visa card, with which they presumably could buy chocolate bars and give them bragging rights on social media.  

The selection of brands on the list provides clues about what motivates Millennials and what they are interested in. It would be easy to say these survey takers probably don’t have jobs or families, or they have too much time on their hands. So I won’t say that.

But I will say what the grocery brands on the list really tell us about Millennials. The brands fall into four groups: snacks (Frito-Lay, Hershey, Nestle), beverages (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, and Mountain Dew), and other (Kraft, General Mills and Kellogg’s).

All of these brands are what I call fun food, with the exception of Kraft and cereal (even though I consider Count Chocula a fun food). While Millennials are playing games, they nosh on chips and chocolate, and wash all of it down with soda. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – except the food police don’t like it. For them, carbonated soft drinks, chips and candy are the Axis of Evil. They lead to obesity, diabetes and other awful discomforts of the body. Since Millennials engage with these brands online, I can only assume they eat and drink these products because they like them.  

How can the supposed good-for-you foods get involved? Easy. Develop even better games for Millennials. Some of these brands could be Chiquita and Dole (fruit), Dannon and Yoplait (yogurt), Kretschmer and Bob’s Red Mill (wheat germ), and others.

Maybe Dole could post a crate of oranges on their website. Millennials have to guess how many total pits are in all of the oranges. The person who comes the closest – without going over the actual number – wins their choice of an orange t-shirt or a crate of oranges. Maybe Kretschmer can ask Millennials to email the names of people they know who actually eat wheat germ. Each person submitting more than three names wins wheat germ for life.    
 

With the right game or contest, these brands will be on the Favorites List next survey.