New Loblaw campaign asks, 'Do you yuzu?'
If you don’t know much about yuzu, it’s likely you will soon. Loblaw is making the citrusy fruit the cornerstone of its President’s Choice summer marketing campaign with the kind of advertising push likely to make it top of mind for many foodies (and grocery shoppers) in the weeks ahead.
“There is a new fruit flavour of the summer,” said Meghan Nameth, senior vice-president of marketing for Loblaw Companies Limited, of the yuzu marketing push. “So we're really using many different channels to reach customers to tell them about this flavour and how awesome it is… It’s quite addictive actually, so we’re excited to bring it to Canadians.”
Each year PC delivers a range of innovative products intended to “make your summer better,” said Nameth. And this year, the PC product development team identified yuzu as a flavour that could enhance a number of different products. “This year, we just had this unbelievable discovery of yuzu that we felt needed to be talked about in a really big way.”
The citrusy fruit—“Imagine lime, lemon, and orange had a sweet mysterious little baby,” said actress and comedian Ann Pornel in the TV ad—is featured in eight different products in the just released President’s Choice Insiders Report, including lemonade, cheesecake and a cold brew coffee.
“This is a flavour that makes anything from coffee to cheesecake to hot sauce better,” said Nameth.
With the product line available now, Loblaw is putting yuzu front and centre in its communications campaign that launched last week.
“Meet yuzu: you’ll want it in everything,” is the headline on landing page of the Insiders Report. In an email to PC Optimum members, Loblaw president Galen Weston also puts the focus on yuzu. “I tried it. And I’m kind of obsessed,” reads his note. “It reminds me of when President’s Choice launched our PC Memories of Szechwan Peanut Satay Sauce in 1991. It quickly outsold ketchup!”
There will be a large, multi-media advertising campaign to promote the new yuzu products and, beginning later this week (May 29), a TikTok challenge using the hashtag #DoYouYuzu and asking consumers to “use the product in unique ways,” said Nameth.
“It's not just an advertising campaign. It's really to spark conversation with the TikTok community, and invite people to get really creative with our products and our yuzu products in particular,” she said. “Because our belief is there's really no one way to yuzu.”