Individual Report: Bakers Delight
MKG470
Word Count: 1,370

Method Summary

Background and Aim of Ad Campaign:
Bakers Delight is a high-end bakery chain located in Australia. It was known as one of the world’s most successful bakery franchises and has grown into a booming company with 614 store locations in Australia. However, it was not your average bakery. Bakers Delight was known for having highly skillful bakers and had a reputation for selling high quality products. Therefore, it was the bread expert for which people were willing to pay a premium (Effie, 2011).
However, in early 2010, things drastically changed for Bakers Delight. Overall market share dropped tremendously, resulting in a decline in sales growth for over 18 months. Customers were leaving and not coming back. Why did sales suddenly decrease? According to the case study, an overuse of short-term promotions created an unsustainable business model for customers. This meant they had to rely on ready-to-eat products like pizzas and pastries. In addition, the bread and bakery industry was becoming more premium, which made Bakers Delight less special and did not stick out from the rest like it used to. Small family-owned bakeries passed up Bakers Delight by releasing fresher and better tasting breads. Lastly, their previous “happy bakers” marketing campaign died out and more families shopped for bread at supermarkets due to price and convenience. Ultimately, they had to reaffirm its place in a more specialized market, and remind customers of its high quality products (Effie, 2011).

The aim of their new ad campaign, which ran from June 2010 until the end of June 2011, was to turn around the decreasing customer numbers and see positive growth. They wanted to see an increase in MAT year-on-year growth from -4.9% to 0%. Bakers Delight also wanted to see a jump on bread sales and reducing reliance on ready-to-eat products from 38% to 40%. Another campaign objective they had was to see a -2% to -1% jump in “Carers & Sharers”- which are simply “nurturing mothers who wanted the best for their family” (Effie, 2011). Bakers delight lost this core target audience during the decline, and hoped to gain them back and buy their bread for everyday consumption. Last but not least, they wanted to see in overall increase in market share which was at an all time low of 13.1%. All in all, they had to re-convince customers that their high quality products were worth paying more for.

Method Used to Test Ad Campaign Effectiveness:
Bakers Delight decided to run multiple print ads, in-store ads, and television ads (commercials) during the entire year-long campaign. Television was selected as the primary medium for this campaign because it had high traffic for “Carers & Sharers”, or mainly mothers. In addition, print ads as well as in-store ads showed that they baked in store, made by hand, no preservatives, made fresh every day and baked from scratch (Effie, 2011).

Results: Once the campaign ended in June 2011, the results were staggering. Their position in the bread market was higher then it had ever been. Bakers delight year-on-year growth MAT increased from -4.9% to -.7% in April 2011, which was right on track. Bread products increased from 38% to 42% in March 2011, three months before the campaign even ended. Also, their market share increased to 13.1% to 13.6% in just 8 months. However, the biggest result that showed their ad campaign effectiveness was their overall sales, increasing from $407 million dollars annually in 2010 to $408.9 million dollars annually in 2011 (Effie, 2011). That is over a million-dollar increase.

Method Criticism
Method Limitations:
One of the limitations of this case study is the method they used to measure ad effectiveness. After running the campaign, they displayed the success of their ad effectiveness mainly through annual sales and market