How do you make carrots cool? In 2008, when I became the CEO of Bolthouse Farms, that was the question we needed to answer. Like most agricultural businesses, the company had been preoccupied for much of its 93-year history with supply: getting its products—primarily carrots but also juices and dressings—from the field and the factory to the family dinner table. We liked steady, predictable demand, of course, but no one was seeking step-change growth.
As a 20-year veteran of the soft drinks industry, I wasn’t satisfied with that. If Coca-Cola could persuade people to drink more than a billion servings of its soda each day, why couldn’t we do the same for a vegetable? Junk food companies were experts in demand creation; we just had to use some of their tactics.
We started with simple tweaks to our pricing and packaging strategies for juices. Then, in 2010, came the big push: a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign—“Eat ’Em Like Junk Food”—that used tongue-in-cheek TV, print, and digital ads to liken baby carrots to Cheetos, Doritos, and other snack food favorites. It was an instant hit, generating significant media attention and boosting sales by 13%.
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