Two sectors of the produce industry have an opportunity to enter a joint promotion with a major national consumer brand, Nickelodeon.
The man behind this opportunity is Nickelodeon’s Rex Weiss, senior director of retail business development. Weiss’ office is in Rogers, AR, which is by no coincidence located near Walmart headquarters in Bentonville.
Early this year Nickelodeon and Walmart enjoyed a highly successful pineapple tie-in promotion in conjunction with the February movie release of “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water.”
Nickelodeon is also focused on coming promotions with other grocers and other produce commodities. Nickelodeon has a corporate goal to influence healthy lifestyles through fresh produce promotions. Thus, Nickelodeon is inviting participation from commodity groups for similar promotions.
Weiss said that Nickelodeon is currently aligning two other produce commodities to create events around the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2” theatrical release in June 2016. This will begin with a spring promotion starting around Easter to publicize the movie followed by a June promotion when the movie is released. A third promotion will boost sales of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2” DVD release in September. Nickelodeon produce partners have another chance for a holiday promotion beginning in November 2016.
A green commodity would be a particularly appropriate tie-in for the green-turtle-based movie, Weiss noted.
Pineapples were a similarly logical tie-in for the Walmart promotion with tropical-themed “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water.” The pineapple event involved a hangtag program that on one side featured the movie and on the backside was an offer via Walmart’s Vudu service to pre-buy the upcoming DVD release at a discount.
There were 2 million pineapples with hangtags distributed with this offer. Weiss said that for competitive reasons he couldn’t detail the data describing the success, but “I will say that Walmart would like to replicate it at some point in the future.”
Another phase of the cross-merchandising at Walmart was Nickelodeon’s partnership with the app Blippar to unlock other promotional activations.
“Of the six partners involved in the Blippar program, over 50 percent of the actual activations came from the pineapple tag,” Weiss said. “This performance in the produce section was unanticipated but highly instructive in that Blippar (and the other partners) saw how impactful produce-area events can be.”
“Our intellectual property is of great value” to tie-in partners, said Weiss, who added that many food manufacturers, such as General Mills, Kraft and Campbell’s have long tied into cross merchandising with Nickelodeon and other non-food companies. This is an opportunity for produce “to leverage for increased lift and exposure.”
Weiss noted that “Sponge Bob Square Pants” will pass its 200th television episode next year. This means the television show, which was launched in 1999, has had more shows than either “I Love Lucy” or “Seinfeld.”
Nickelodeon joined the Produce for Better Health Foundation two years ago. In 2014, Nickelodeon received a Role Model Award from PBH. In March, Weiss spoke at the PBH annual conference in Scottsdale, AZ, about the success of the Walmart pineapple promotion.
Being active in PBH is an indication of Nickelodeon’s interest in enhancing the fruit and vegetable category.
