Frozen and Barren

            Thanks to the efforts of Senior Lecturer Lisa Dobias, my media cohort was granted the opportunity to complete an external project for LatinWorks in Austin. Having just been named the 2012 Hispanic Agency of the Year by AdWeek, LatinWorks asked us to develop a media plan targeting Hispanics in Los Angeles and Houston for an existing frozen potato company. After dividing into teams, I was asked to conduct primary research in Houston neighborhoods with a high Hispanic-concentration.

            Although field observations are not generalizable, the purpose of my research was to gain insights about our target audience and the environments they shop in. As a team, we determined it was important to learn about Hispanic consumption from Hispanic consumers if possible. Therefore, I spent several hours driving around the city and locating grocery stores that already carried our client’s frozen potatoes.
 

            The absence of traffic in the frozen food section was something that caught me by surprise. I expected the convenience of frozen vegetables and prepared meals would bring a number of shoppers into the aisle since Houston is notorious as busy city. After several minutes without any visitors, I classified this area of the store as “barren” in my notes. It’s easy to understand the rationale for walking through quickly in response to the colder temperatures but it alarmed me to see shoppers skip over this aisle as if it did not exist. This happened at all 4 of the groceries I went to that day.

 

            With this in mind, I returned to Austin and found secondary research that supported my observations. According to the Mintel report titled Hispanics and the Perimeter of the Grocery,   more than 80% of Spanish-dominant Hispanics feel that frozen and canned vegetables are not as nutritious as fresh vegetables. In the real world, this translates in low sales and barren grocery aisles. Therefore our recommendation would have to address some of the misconceptions about the product category in order to successfully position the brand in the Hispanic market.
 

            As supporters of the cliché, “the media is the message,” we recommended doing several in-store guerilla promotions specifically designed to increase traffic to the frozen vegetables aisle. In addition to floor and door decals in front of our client’s products, we wanted place a stand up display in the produce section adjacent to the fresh potatoes with coupons and nutritional information about our brand.