A Finely-Tuned Target More Successful with Brand Alliance Marketing

"Breakfast" at IHOP

Recently Universal Pictures, creators of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, teamed up with IHOP Restaurants in a brand alliance that puts Lorax themed items on the restaurant’s menu. If you are wondering what The Lorax has in common with pancakes the answer is the target market’s demographics: children under or around the age of 12. Menu items for this group include:

•    Truffula Chip Pancakes – Pancakes filled and topped with rainbow sprinkles.
•    Rooty Tooty Bar-Ba-Looty Blueberry Cone Cake – A pancake with blueberry topping in a crispy waffle cone. 
•    Pipsqueak’s Breakfast – Green Eggs & Ham – Scrambled egg and creamed spinach. 
•    Mac 'n Cheese & Truffula Trees – KRAFT-brand Macaroni & Cheese with broccoli florets. 

On the surface, the strategic alliance seems as easy as GIVING candy to a baby. It is not a stretch to get kids around 12-years old interested in a greasy, sugary meal. Children are not known for their stoic willpower; if a child is at IHOP, getting him to hold back from eating a “Blueberry Cone Cake,” something that looks and probably tastes like an ice cream cone, is not likely to happen.

The fly-in-the-pancake-batter for this brand union is getting parents’ buy-in; young children don’t always have their own money to spend and never have an independent means of transportation. Adult supervision is necessary for the sale of these special meals and there has been significant criticism in both the independent media and main stream press regarding product tie-ins with Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. The complaints range from insincere green-washing and not staying true to the story’s anti-consumerists message, to nonsensical associations like “dessert” for breakfast.

Taco Bell has raucously unveiled a new product with brand alliances too – specifically Doritos. Doritos Locos Tacos is Taco Bell’s regular taco filling inside a Doritos Nacho Cheese taco shell; the popular Cool Ranch flavor will release later this year. These products are the biggest launch in Taco Bell’s history and unlike Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax launch, the independent and main stream press is ready to help out. That said, the Doritos / Taco Bell launch is much simpler: bring two junk food brands together in hopes of creating a winning product. 

Nutritional scientists’ discoveries about evolutionary physiology find that our ancestral humans were hard-wired to seek out fat and sugar because it was rare and hard to come by. Now, fats and sugars turn up in abundance and for the most part, modern humans can't say no. This situation seems ideal for marketers but make no mistake, there is a lot of competition to sell food. Simply offering products people crave does not guarantee success.

Taco Bell gets brand alliance marketing right by actively separating what is often the voice of reason, parents, from impulsive young buyers. The target for this nacho-cheese dusted food product is 16 to 24-year olds, slightly older than IHOP’s Lorax items. Like the younger group, this demographic has access to only some of their parents’ income but a lot more freedom to spend it. Not much dinero is needed anyway; Taco Bell has set prices for Doritos Locos Tacos under $2. What’s more, adult supervision was actively discouraged during the product’s midnight release; most parents are asleep at midnight!