The holiday season is here, meaning Americans are quickly planning, preparing and shopping for traditional holiday meals. It’s also a time of year when consumers should view the frozen food aisle as an ideal place to fill their carts. Unfortunately, that may not be the case. Instead, consumers are constantly inundated with messaging telling them what they should and should not eat, with “processed” and frozen foods being items they should steer clear from.
This unfair, unfortunate and inaccurate mantra is very much top-of-mind for very good reason—consumers are increasingly skipping the frozen food aisle. In fact, the frozen food aisle is experiencing flat or declining sales across 98% of the frozen food categories.
Thankfully, the frozen foods conversation is about to change!
That’s because leading frozen food makers and retailers have united in support of a new and exciting category promotion campaign. The Frozen Food Roundtable, organized under the auspices of the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI), McLean, Va., has come together to launch a multi-year, multi-million dollar positive, consumer-facing, nationwide campaign.
The goal is simple—to change the way consumers think and feel about frozen foods, to bring them back into the frozen food aisle and to encourage them to take foods made in frozen food kitchens and serve in their own.
Utilizing traditional and digital advertising, a robust public relations program and a plethora of tools designed to bring the campaign to life in the frozen food aisle, this campaign will reach consumers at home and in the grocery store.
The Roundtable came about in late 2012 and is led by senior executives from AFFI member companies such as ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Heinz North America, Hillshire Brands, Jasper Wyman & Sons, Kellogg Co., Pinnacle Foods, Nestlé USA and Schwan Food Co.
This summer, several of the nation’s largest retailers came together to detail the campaign, its objectives, timeline and opportunities for engagement. With input from the Roundtable’s Retail Advisory Council, the Roundtable is partnering with retailers across the country to welcome consumers back to the frozen food aisle.
The Roundtable will soon seed the campaign by promoting the findings of a just-completed multi-year study conducted by the University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, Ga., that compares the nutritional profile of frozen fruits and vegetables to that of their “fresh” counterparts. The Frozen Food Foundation, an AFFI-affiliated, not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering scientific research and public awareness of the nutritional benefits of frozen foods, commissioned the study. As expected, the UGA study demonstrates that frozen fruits and vegetables are at least as rich in nutrients, and in many cases, are packed with higher nutrient levels than their “fresh” counterparts.
To change the mindset of consumers and help them understand that freezing is just nature’s pause button, the results of this study represent the good news consumers are hungry to hear about.
Working with our partners at GolinHarris, Chicago, we will package and share this information with the media and leading food influencers to initiate a far more positive conversation about frozen foods.
We’re excited to get this initial public relations promotion underway, and even more enthused as we quickly approach the much larger launch of our campaign online, on television and in store.
As you would expect, there is significant interest in this campaign throughout the frozen food industry. The response among frozen food makers and retailers has been tremendous, underscoring the need for a campaign of this magnitude.
If you’re interested in learning how your company can support the Roundtable’s campaign, please contact
info@frozenfoodroundtable.org or 703-821-0770.
