From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

Food for Love, a South
African TV series, follows the
adventures of a McCain chef.
names on the package along with a message explaining that McCain had bought Irvin
& Johnson’s frozen food business and intended to maintain the high quality customers
expected.
Partner, who is South African and had come to McCain from Irvin & Johnson,
was in charge of implementing the co-branding project. “Our consumers had experienced
the overnight deletion of well-known brands and the introduction of global
brands without any warning, and our research showed that they found this very irritating,”
she says.
The co-branding was accompanied by the new McCain advertising and many new
product launches, all of which sparked interest among shoppers in the frozen food
category. The McCain launch was so successful that the co-branding was ended after
only three months instead of twelve, as had originally been planned.
One of McCain’s best marketing ploys was to buy some time on the South African
national television system to carry a soap opera, Food for Love, about the romantic
adventures of Ben, a recipe developer for McCain Foods. But McCain also got
TV exposure by making news. That happened when it opened its new head office
in Bedfordview, a suburb of Johannesburg. McCain wanted to put up billboards
but couldn’t because its building is located on a freeway. However, there were no
restrictions on what could be put up above the building, so McCain erected five
three-metre-high scarecrows on the roof with a wraparound on the building showing
fresh vegetables.
As a result, everyone driving to and from the Johannesburg airport gets the message
that McCain is taking good care of fresh vegetables. “That got us onto national
TV,” laughs Partner.
Mark McCain, who became chairman of McCain Foods (South Africa) Ltd. when
the company was established in 1996, is optimistic because he sees the same trends
occurring in South Africa in the early years of the twenty-first century that were
so favourable to McCain in Canada when the company was launched in 1957. More
fast food restaurants are being built, more and more people have greater disposable
income, and the number of dual-income families is increasing, thereby creating new
demand for convenience foods.
In addition, more homes are getting hooked up to electricity service, allowing
more South Africans to own fridges, stoves, and microwaves. “The growth is coming
from the people who are moving up the social ladder,” says Mark McCain.
McCain did not let the absence of electricity in South Africa hold it back. “Drink
the local wine” means adapting, so the company also offers small frozen vegetable
packets intended to be used immediately. It’s not just lack of electricity that necessitates
small packages but also lack of money. Porteus points out that yogurt was not
accepted by South African consumers until it was packaged in a cup and sold for one
rand, the equivalent of about seventeen Canadian cents. “People have enough money
for food for today, not for tomorrow, so you have to sell them just enough for today.”
Irvin & Johnson had not targeted what Partner calls “the emerging markets.” All of
its advertising was aimed at higher income groups. “So you’ve got a black consumer
who has never bought a frozen product before, and all of our packs are opaque. There
was this question of why they were opaque and what were we trying to hide. People
couldn’t risk the fifteen rand to buy the product, in case it didn’t perform. It has taken
a lot of money and a lot of resources to communicate that we have only the best inside
the bag.”
Sales of the former Irvin & Johnson potato and vegetable businesses have tripled
since McCain took them over and not just as a result of improved marketing. “Irvin &
Johnson had good people, but those people had no access to up-to-date technology,”
says Porteus. “They had no access to proper management systems. They were starved
of those assets. Soon after we took over, we called together all the senior management
192 From the GrouN d up
New w orlds to CoN quer 193
Scarecrows atop McCain’s
office building near
Johannesburg.