Case Study - Australian Lunch Week

Sanitarium Lunch Today was the first to introduce heat-and-eat lunches to cater to the busy lifestyles of working women. However, there was a lull in the sales of the products due to misconceptions on the nutritional value of packaged meals and there was low awareness of Lunch Today.

Australian Lunch Week was launched to increase public awareness on the nutritional value of Sanitarium's products and the convenience of packaged lunches.

Interestingly, Sanitarium's PR campaign followed all aspects of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, objectives and threats) guidelines, and the campaign proved to be a success, with the outcome exceeding the measurable objectives.

Sanitarium secured speaking events at major organisations such as Telstra, Pfizer and Ernst & Young. Besides, it also engaged high profile spokespeople to convey their marketing message to the public. From this, I have learnt that using prominent organisations or individuals enables the PR practitioner to increase the credibility of the campaign, thus increasing its chances of succeeding.

Experiential marketing was also employed in the campaign. Product samples were distributed to consumers and the spokespeople talked about their personal experiences with Lunch Today. This form of marketing enabled the public to judge for themselves if the food was nutritious and convenient enough for a quick and healthy lunch. Getting the spokespeople to relate their experiences with Lunch Today would play on the public's emotions and convince them to buy the product.

However, I feel that Sanitarium could have done even more to achieve its objective. Besides hiring high profile spokespeople to endorse Lunch Today, laymen could have been roped in to speak too. The target audience of the campaign had been young women who were too busy with work to get a healthy lunch. Perhaps Sanitarium could get a few individuals who fall within this category to sample Lunch Today and then get them to speak about how it has benefited them. The target audience would probably be convinced to buy Lunch Today more easily as the spokespeople have similar lifestyles and would be able to relate better to them.