Serina has emailed you seeking advice on growing Nutty Foods that align with the company’s mission: Marketing Essay, RMIT, Singapore

CASE STUDY: You’d have to be nutty: developing the Boost Nuts retail brand

Background:

At the age of eight, Joe Malino migrated to Australia with his family from the small rural farming village in southern Italy where he was born. At an early age, Joe worked in his father’s suburban fruit shop then, after leaving school, he worked as a clerk in a family-run food importing business. Here Joe learned more about the food industry and developed the entrepreneurial drive and passion to establish his own business that he called Nutty Foods.

At first, he operated from the bungalow of his suburban Melbourne home and with the help of his family, hard work and a commitment to quality and innovation the business grew rapidly. Today, Nutty Foods has grown into a great food company, with over $300 million in annual revenue operating across Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

Nutty Foods was founded on the pillars of family and food and in 2017, Joe’s daughter Serina was appointed Managing Director. Joe’s values of hard work, his friendly nature and his passion for food are shared by Serina, however, the food industry is facing stronger competition from global food producers and Serina believes that Nutty Foods needs to move beyond its core business of manufacture and wholesale distribution of food ingredients and develop its own retail brands.

Nutty Foods’ passion for innovative, quality food solutions led to the creation of the Boost Nuts range offering the very best almonds, brazil nuts, macadamias, pistachios, pine nuts and pecans grown in Australia. Boost Nuts are delicious in sweet and savoury baking recipes or for snacking.

Encouraged by the success of a recent Integrated Marketing Communications Plan implemented by the company with the help of a full-service advertising agency, Nutty Foods has also developed Boost Nuts Nothing But Nuts Peanut Butter – a natural peanut butter made from 100% Australian peanuts. The nuts are roasted in salt and sesame oil for flavour and then blended fresh with no preservatives or additives. There are plans to add other nut butters to the range such as almond and macadamia, however, Serina needs to generate some sales success to generate revenue to invest in further growth.

To achieve this goal, she began looking for a marketing communications expert to help develop the Boost Nuts retail brand, with the view to launching the new peanut butter product this year and continuing the growth of the Boost Nuts recipe and snack products. As part of RMIT’s LinkedIn involvement, Serina became aware of the significant positive impact that Marketing Communications students were having on the product development and marketing communications in Australia and she was impressed by your resume. Congratulations, you are the newly appointed “Marketing Communications Manager” for Nutty Foods.

The recent Boost Nuts IMC Plan helped achieve distribution through the major supermarket chains and stimulate initial demand. You know that gaining repeat purchases and building loyalty is critical to maintaining shelf space. Serina has asked you to evaluate the recent Boost Nuts campaign and in preparing for the launch of Boost Nuts Nothing But Nuts Peanut Butter, provide answers to some key questions for her report to the Board of Directors headed by her father Joe.

REQUIREMENTS

Serina has emailed you seeking advice on growing Nutty Foods that align with the company’s mission. A recommendation must be presented at the next Board meeting and Serina has asked for your advice.

You are required to provide answers to multi-part questions posed in the following three emails from the Managing Director for the Board meeting presentation. You can respond to the emails individually or in one short report that addresses all questions in the three emails but either way you must make sure that it is clear what question you are answering by numbering each part e.g., For question (a) from the first email write Question 1 (a) or Q1(a).

Please keep your total response to a maximum of 3,200 words.

It is important that you read each question carefully and answer what is specifically asked. Because you are new you won’t have full information so you will need to clearly state any assumptions you make.