Labelsync Case Study: Conagra Paves Way for Brands on Smartlabel
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LABELSYNC™ CASE STUDY Conagra® Paves Way for Brands on SmartLabel™ LABELSYNC CONAGRA CASE STUDY 1 BACKGROUND Conagra Brands, headquartered in Chicago, combines a rich heritage of making great food with a sharpened focus and entrepreneurial spirit. Its iconic brands include Birds Eye®, Duncan Hines®, Healthy Choice®, Marie Callender’s®, Reddi-wip®, and Slim Jim®, as well as emerging brands, such as Angie’s® BOOMCHICKAPOP®, Duke’s®, Earth Balance®, Gardein™, and Frontera®. The company is transforming the way it operates to fulfill what consumers and customers want in a smart, simple way. With 50 locations, approximately 17,000 employees, and $11 billion in annual revenue, Conagra is modernizing its iconic food brands, leveraging fresh opportunities and adapting to a changing landscape — all with a culture that’s ready to capture growth and drive shareholder value. CHALLENGES In the spring of 2016, Conagra experienced greater demand for increased product attribution. This demand was coming from three different needs for the company. Responding to the Consumer’s Demand For “Many of today’s Transparency consumers are looking for more transparency Over the past five years, consumers’ expectations have increased about when it comes to their food. We are committed what information is available to them. They are looking for more insights to providing access about the products they use and consume, far beyond the basic nutrition to the information facts panel and standard ingredient list. Now shoppers are looking for consumers want and need to make informed diet compliance, allergen information, sustainability efforts — just to decisions about what name a few. Conagra needed to augment their logistic and supply they eat.” chain-oriented data to share more product information in a Mark Evans, VP Product consumer-friendly way. Readiness, Conagra Complying With New Labeling Mandates In the summer of 2016, new bioengineered food disclosure legislation mandated that food containing bioengineered ingredients be labeled “The rise of e-commerce on-pack. Conagra began the application of QR codes on packaging to food shopping placed greater demand on ensure all disclosure options would be available for disclosure. being able to gather, aggregate and share product information in a Capitalizing on The Rise of Grocery E-commerce consumer-facing way.” Finally, retailers were experiencing a rise in grocery e-commerce, with Mark Evans, VP Product the early success of Instacart and Whole Foods leading others to follow Readiness, Conagra suit. Conagra was tasked with developing content and providing more digital data to support retailers in these efforts. Conagra Brands received consideration in exchange for providing the information used in this case study. 2 IMPLEMENTATION Conagra committed itself to providing deeper product information to consumers and retailers, as well as complying with new government regulations. After a pilot program with the Orville Redenbacher® brand, “SmartLabel provided an additional avenue, Conagra realized that SmartLabel could address all three issues beyond our branded across all of its brands. websites and retailer product pages, to share product information Going All in With SmartLabel directly with our consumers.” Created by the Trading Partner Alliance, SmartLabel extends beyond what’s on the package label with even more information. Amy McCarthy, Manager, Product Lifecycle It includes things such as nutritional information, ingredients, Management, Conagra allergens, third-party certifications, social compliance programs, usage instructions, advisories & safe handling instructions, company / brand information, along with other pertinent information about the product. Each product has a specific landing page containing detailed information on ingredients and other product attributes. SmartLabel strives to ensure that consumers will be able to easily search or scan products to access consistent, brand-verified “If I have a package product information. in my left hand, and a phone in my right...and Once Conagra invested the time to shore up their data, the team felt they both tell me the confident that they could create SmartLabel pages that included more same thing, then what is the point? We quickly than just a digital way to get the same information already on-pack. decided that to make The team wanted to maximize the investment beyond digitizing the the most of SmartLabel capabilities, we would packaging to include additional product attributes, ingredient parsing, need to add content that and consumer-friendly ingredient definitions. isn’t on the label.” Amy McCarthy, Manager, Product Lifecycle Management, Conagra Choosing The Right Partner There are two approaches to SmartLabel: you either build it in-house with IT, or go with a solution provider. Label Insight built a solution that’s not only best-in-class, but is affordable, and meets the requirements of the GMA. LABELSYNC CONAGRA CASE STUDY 3 When dealing with competing priorities, IT resources may not always be available for new projects. Conagra understood the benefit of launching SmartLabel for their products, and chose to work with Label Insight based on their proven track record and deep knowledge of the platform having been involved with the GMA implementation guide for SmartLabel. Out of all of Label Insight’s hosted pages (46% of the total SmartLabel market), Healthy Choice boasts the most page sessions. Conagra’s Healthy Choice brand links its SmartLabel pages right from the product website. For the 2018 calendar year ending 12/29/18, the Healthy Choice brand grew +20.4% (or +$85.1M) vs year ago. Healthy Choice products with a SL page experienced +15% greater growth vs. the brand average. Healthy Choice products with a SmartLabel page grew +23.5% (or +$94.8M) vs. year ago. 2018 Sales Growth Products with SmartLabel +1 greater than other products +23.5% +$94.8M +20.4% +$85.1M BRAND AVERAGE PRODUCT WITH SMARTLABEL PAGES Source: Nielsen Product Insider Total US xAOC 52 Weeks Ending 12/29/18 RESULTS Success of the Conagra SmartLabel initiative is measured by the implementation and the benefits of digitizing and improving accessibility to complete product information. SmartLabel by The Numbers To date, Label Insight has helped Conagra launch more than 2,000 SmartLabel pages across 50 brands. What’s more, Label Insight provides usage data on SmartLabel that can inform decisions on where to further invest resources. LABELSYNC CONAGRA CASE STUDY 4 Bundling Transparency & Disclosures to Reduce Costs As Conagra intended to use SmartLabel as their bioengineering disclosure tool as well as its transparency platform, the team smartly “After committing to coupled the SmartLabel on-pack work with the Nutrition Label Reform an expedited timeline graphic updates. This meant that product labels received nutrition label for publishing almost updates and the SmartLabel QR Code and call to action — minimizing 1,000 SmartLabel pages by the end of packaging touches and lowering costs. 2017, Label Insight did everything possible to help us achieve our goal. They became almost an extension of our team and an invaluable partner in digitizing, verifying and hosting our SmartLabel pages.” Mark Evans, VP Product Readiness, Conagra Unlocking The Value of The Data Conagra found that building complete product records unlocked tremendous value beyond SmartLabel. The company is now using this content in many important instances across the digital world. Some key examples include: E-commerce Sales Conagra was able to better support retailers and e-tailers looking to increase their grocery e-commerce presence. The team believed that not providing this data would be a significant competitive disadvantage. Conagra found it beneficial to take the effort in supporting online grocery sales one step further and create SmartLabel pages. Customer Assistance Conagra’s Consumer Affairs department shares customer feedback on what products are trending based on questions and calls. In one instance, Reddi-wip had launched a non-dairy option and Consumer Affairs received questions around it not expelling properly. Conagra was able to update the SmartLabel page with advice on how to correct the issue, and Consumer Affairs could direct buyers how to find the page over the phone. Ingredient Search Now Conagra can quickly evaluate where an individual ingredient is used with robust search powered by Label Insight’s API. LABELSYNC CONAGRA CASE STUDY 5 Employee Reference Internally, not all Conagra employees have access to systems with product information. SmartLabel has become the de facto tool for internal employees to use as a quick reference for product information. Technology Advances With the rise of smart appliances, Conagra has been asked to share cooking instructions with major appliance brands to enable this technology. Previously, this type of information was not structured in Conagra’s systems to deliver externally. With Label Insight, Conagra can now deliver that data via an API. “Think of SmartLabel as a means to an end. It’s about the data. This data is becoming an absolute requirement to do business in a digital economy.” Mark Evans, VP Product Readiness, Conagra LOOKING FORWARD After two years of participation, SmartLabel is now gaining greater internal awareness at Conagra. While it started largely within the Research & Development team, the benefits of SmartLabel drove participation and impact across Marketing, Purchasing, Data Management, Brand Design, and more. The company