Welch’s Might Be A Tradition-Rich Company, But Its Marketing Strategy Is All Digital

Juice manufacturer Welch’s – founded 156 years ago in 1869 – barely spends any of its marketing budget on traditional media, including linear TV.

According to Katelyn Nugent, who heads up the integrated marketing  communications team at Welch’s, the reasons for relying almost solely on digital channels are twofold.

First, the company is co-owned by a few hundred family farmers across the country’s largest grape growing regions, so they “don’t necessarily have the deepest pockets in the CPG industry,” said Nugent.

Secondly, and more importantly, using traditional media makes it much harder for Welch’s to track ROAS and ROI, which are integral to their larger marketing strategy.

Focusing on data makes Welch’s “be really thoughtful about where our dollars are going,” Nugent said.

Bringing the juice

Welch’s has three key portfolios within its larger product line: juice, including refrigerated, shelf-stable and single-serve products; spreads, which covers jams and jellies; and sparkling, which is its own separate category that includes non-alcoholic rosé and cider.

Although each portfolio has its own distinct consumer segments and go-to-market strategies, digital is “at the core of everything we do,” said Nugent.

Building brand awareness for the newly launched Zero Sugar juice line is the top priority for Welch’s this fiscal year, which started in September. As the name suggests, the product is targeted toward younger, health-conscious consumers.

“Younger,” in this case, does not mean little kids with juice boxes. It means millennial and Gen Z shoppers, a demographic that Welch’s already had in mind during their packaging rebrand about two years ago. The new look is “modern, bold [and] vibrant,” according to Nugent, and uses a cheeky expletive-adjacent catchphrase, “Let’s fruit stuff up.”

“We’ve seen, through our targeting and digital acumen, that we’re bringing back people to the brand who had previously left us because we didn’t have a zero sugar or a low sugar option,” said Nugent.

The brand awareness play called for some product placement in linear TV, but Welch’s main way to amplify this initiative was online video and CTV.
Season 6 of Kelly Clarkson’s daytime talk show kicked off last year with a Zero Sugar-branded juice bar promoting a mocktail, Nugent said. The promotion included a chance to work with NBCUniversal’s viewership data and dig into insights from the placement. (That their product appeared on broadcast television as well as YouTube clips and streaming services was just a nice bonus.)

Bringing the data

Measuring brand awareness for efforts like the Zero Sugar line requires multiple data integrations. Besides working with programmers like NBCUniversal to gather audience insights, Welch’s relies on Circana and Scintilla to supply the data that’s used to track shopper behavior and consumer segments.

Working with Circana allows Welch’s to quickly tweak their marketing strategy based on regular biweekly reports, which comes especially handy for an all-year campaign like Zero Sugar.

“We’re already able to optimize by the end of flight one before we head into flight two,” said Nugent. “We love when media partners can be nimble with us as we learn and improve the buys throughout the year.”

Creating new nostalgia

As Welch’s evolves its marketing strategy to be increasingly digital, it’s able to test new media placements through dedicated testing budgets. Overall, Welch’s uses a 70-20-10 marketing model. Big and moderate risks go into the 10% and 20% buckets, respectively, while tried-and-true methods – including risks that graduate into consistently strong performers – end up in the 70%.

Working with social influencers, for example, started out as an experiment. After realizing how well it boosted engagements, though, the integrated marketing team made influencers a big part of their holiday season budget last year to great effect.

Looking at Welch’s presence on social media, in fact, you may notice a lot of users fondly recalling their childhood experiences with the juice. Although that reminiscence is great for creating engagement, the brand does not rely on nostalgia in its messaging.

That fuzzy feeling you get when you see a Welch’s ad just happens to be a by-product of how long the company’s been around, said Nugent.

“I’m an ’80s kid, so I know that girl with the cute cheeks and the blonde hair,” she added, referring to the now-iconic grape juice ads that once appeared on broadcast television. “But the job of the current team is to create new nostalgia for the next generations, which is why we’re committed to building that resonance and relevancy for new consumers.”