Not long ago, it seemed that Oscar Mayer Lunchables — that king of kids' lunches — had finally met its match. Scorned by health critics and challenged by other brands, sales flattened throughout the 2000s, leaving some to wonder if the portable processed lunch would survive. "Have Lunchables become uncool?" read one headline in 2005.
Six years later, the 23-year-old Kraft Foods brand is not only surviving, but thriving, winning where it counts in this category — the school lunch table. Critics are still complaining, for sure. In what looks to be a nod to those voices, Lunchables is pouring millions of dollars behind healthier varieties. The brand — which once partnered with Taco Bell, and as recently as 2009 sold a calorie-packed line called "Maxed Out" — is now touting a line extension filled with Dole fruit, which will be backed with what Kraft calls the largest ad campaign ever for the brand.
The more than $20 million effort, led by Dentsu's McGarryBowen, Chicago, is timed with the start of spring-field-trip season and features kids showing off "orange peel grins." Plans include TV and print ads, including a six-page spread in the royal-wedding issue of People magazine that Kraft estimates will have a 3.7 million circulation, as well as digital storefronts in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. On one day in May, Kraft is planning what it says is the first coordinated media buy on Times Square, with every digital video billboard plugging Lunchables. The campaign will nearly match what Lunchables spent on measured media all of last year ($25.3 million, according to Kantar Media).
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