Espresso with Alfonso Capone
Mastro Lorenzo by Kraft Foods Switzerland is one of the leading brands in the Italian specialty coffee segment. Nevertheless, it is primarily associated with single-serve coffee.
Mastro Lorenzo from Kraft Foods Switzerland is one of the leading brands in the Italian specialty coffee segment. Luca Aloisi's in-house agency JWT+H+F is now to position it as a competence brand for Italo coffee with a broad range.
Coffee culture and Switzerland - at first glance, they don't seem to go together. Mistake! According to the Swiss Cafetier Association, the Swiss sip around 137 liters of coffee per year. That puts them in the middle of the pack in Europe. And compared to their neighbor to the south, where most specialty coffees originate, the Swiss actually consume around 60 percent more coffee.
Switzerland is also far ahead of the Italians in the manufacture and sale of household coffee machines, with sales of around 125 million Swiss francs in 2001. The expansion drive of the coffee house chains is a further indication of the Swiss' growing love of the Turkish drink.
Convenience positioning versus Italo brand world
Kraft Foods Switzerland also wants to profit from this boom. It has already laid the groundwork for this: Twenty years ago, the food and beverage group, which also owns Jacobs, Café Hag, Onko, and Carte Noire, expanded the Swiss bean world to include coffee in convenient portion sachets for piston machines: the Mastro Lorenzo convenience brand.
Whereas at the time of market launch the advertising message focused primarily on simple, clean application, in the campaigns of the nineties the creamy foam came to the fore as an added value. And it continued to dominate Mastro Lorenzo's ads until the first quarter of this year.
However, the course correction - away from application and portion system, towards enjoyment - was not followed by the target group to the extent expected. Although a palate-tingling coffee foam in the simple split-screen implementation built the emotional bridge to the portraits of people in black and white, the brand continued to be associated with portioned coffee. In other words, it was far from promising a sense of genuine Italian art of living.
Even though Marketing Manager Peter Gmünder can look forward to "steady growth," the Kraft brand does not want to rest on its laurels. "Two years ago, we additionally started to intensively support Mastro Lorenzo in the gastronomy sector," says Gmünder about the distribution strategy.
Ordinary people with names of Italian stars
Above the line, Kraft Foods used the launch of the "Crema" bean variety as an opportunity to launch a positioning campaign with the support of JWT+H+F. In three TV commercials, Mastro Lorenzo is to stand even more strongly as the brand for the Italian coffee experience in general.
The massive TV presence will be accompanied by tastings and other promotions in the retail sector. Gmünder says the goal of the new presence is to more than double Mastro Lorenzo's market share of around 5 percent of the total roasted coffee market within three years. "The move beyond portioned coffee to a brand for Italian coffee is crucial for us," he says, referring to its biggest competitors, Migros' own brands.
As in previous campaigns, the client and the agency are focusing on the portion range. The more important areas of 'beans and ground' in terms of volume are to be expanded from the strong image of the bag submarket, the tactic can be explained. The coffee roaster already has a market share of around 40 percent there.
In line with the ambitious quantitative and qualitative goals, CD Remy Fabrikant brewed up three TV spots that "do not correspond to today's zeitgeist", but revive the charm of the Italian dialogue film in the style of "Don Camillo and Peppone".
To do this, he enlisted director Alessandro Cappelletti and cinematographer Ekkehard Pollack, who knew how to direct their amateur actors against a Tuscan backdrop. The spots, shot in feature film quality with German subtitles, are based on stories of mistaken identity with ordinary citizens who happen to bear the names of Italian stars. Like Alberto Tomba, a lawyer from Friuli, Roberto Baggio, a journalist from Venice, and Al Capone, a bar owner in Naples, are also mistaken for their namesakes.
"When it becomes clear at the end of the story that the protagonists are not the real stars, they at least drink the right espresso together: a Mastro Lorenzo," says consultant Pascal Winkler, summarizing the plot.
Of course, they were also on the lookout for female stars, consultant Manuela Zwald tells us. "We found neither a second Sofia Loren nor a Gina Lollobrigida. And 83-year-old Ornella Muti, whom we discovered, would have joined in, but her famous namesake showed little understanding for our desire," Zwald smiles.
Coffee culture and Switzerland - at first glance, they don't seem to go together. Mistake! According to the Swiss Cafetier Association, the Swiss sip around 137 liters of coffee per year. That puts them in the middle of the pack in Europe. And compared to their neighbor to the south, where most specialty coffees originate, the Swiss actually consume around 60 percent more coffee.
Switzerland is also far ahead of the Italians in the manufacture and sale of household coffee machines, with sales of around 125 million Swiss francs in 2001. The expansion drive of the coffee house chains is a further indication of the Swiss' growing love of the Turkish drink.
Convenience positioning versus Italo brand world
Kraft Foods Switzerland also wants to profit from this boom. It has already laid the groundwork for this: Twenty years ago, the food and beverage group, which also owns Jacobs, Café Hag, Onko, and Carte Noire, expanded the Swiss bean world to include coffee in convenient portion sachets for piston machines: the Mastro Lorenzo convenience brand.
Whereas at the time of market launch the advertising message focused primarily on simple, clean application, in the campaigns of the nineties the creamy foam came to the fore as an added value. And it continued to dominate Mastro Lorenzo's ads until the first quarter of this year.
However, the course correction - away from application and portion system, towards enjoyment - was not followed by the target group to the extent expected. Although a palate-tingling coffee foam in the simple split-screen implementation built the emotional bridge to the portraits of people in black and white, the brand continued to be associated with portioned coffee. In other words, it was far from promising a sense of genuine Italian art of living.
Even though Marketing Manager Peter Gmünder can look forward to "steady growth," the Kraft brand does not want to rest on its laurels. "Two years ago, we additionally started to intensively support Mastro Lorenzo in the gastronomy sector," says Gmünder about the distribution strategy.
Ordinary people with names of Italian stars
Above the line, Kraft Foods used the launch of the "Crema" bean variety as an opportunity to launch a positioning campaign with the support of JWT+H+F. In three TV commercials, Mastro Lorenzo is to stand even more strongly as the brand for the Italian coffee experience in general.
The massive TV presence will be accompanied by tastings and other promotions in the retail sector. Gmünder says the goal of the new presence is to more than double Mastro Lorenzo's market share of around 5 percent of the total roasted coffee market within three years. "The move beyond portioned coffee to a brand for Italian coffee is crucial for us," he says, referring to its biggest competitors, Migros' own brands.
As in previous campaigns, the client and the agency are focusing on the portion range. The more important areas of 'beans and ground' in terms of volume are to be expanded from the strong image of the bag submarket, the tactic can be explained. The coffee roaster already has a market share of around 40 percent there.
In line with the ambitious quantitative and qualitative goals, CD Remy Fabrikant brewed up three TV spots that "do not correspond to today's zeitgeist", but revive the charm of the Italian dialogue film in the style of "Don Camillo and Peppone".
To do this, he enlisted director Alessandro Cappelletti and cinematographer Ekkehard Pollack, who knew how to direct their amateur actors against a Tuscan backdrop. The spots, shot in feature film quality with German subtitles, are based on stories of mistaken identity with ordinary citizens who happen to bear the names of Italian stars. Like Alberto Tomba, a lawyer from Friuli, Roberto Baggio, a journalist from Venice, and Al Capone, a bar owner in Naples, are also mistaken for their namesakes.
"When it becomes clear at the end of the story that the protagonists are not the real stars, they at least drink the right espresso together: a Mastro Lorenzo," says consultant Pascal Winkler, summarizing the plot.
Of course, they were also on the lookout for female stars, consultant Manuela Zwald tells us. "We found neither a second Sofia Loren nor a Gina Lollobrigida. And 83-year-old Ornella Muti, whom we discovered, would have joined in, but her famous namesake showed little understanding for our desire," Zwald smiles.
