Sun-Maid Raisins: 1950s to Now

Looking through my Life magazines I was amazed at two things:

How many brands survived 60+ years in an ever-changing economy and market
How many brands didn't survive 60+ years in an ever-changing economy and market

Sun-Maid is one of those brands that survived. And when researching their current advertising campaign I learned something even crazier that that:

Sun-Maid's "Grow Young" campaign is it's first ad in 10 YEARS.

What? How? With how often new ads come out for brands like Coke, Sketchers and Target—not sure why these are the first three that pop into my mind when thinking of current ads—you'd think for a brand to stay relevant and at the forefront of consumers minds that brand would advertise like crazy right?

Before we get into the new campaign, lets take a look at the Sun-Maid Raisins ad from my 1953 Life magazine.

That little box in the corner under Betty Crocker's signature is what I'll be analyzing and we'll be discussing (if you want to comment and discuss it...).

Our three points when analyzing Sun-Maid's 1950 ad and 2019 campaign are:

Target Audience
Message
Design

So, let's start talking about this little 1950s ad.

Target Audience

With our brief history of the 50s from the last post (if you missed it you can read it here), I think it's safe to say that the target audience for Life magazine in the 1950s was mostly working aged white men. I assume this because of traditional family roles and segregation were both larger parts of the atmosphere of the 50s—if I'm wrong please point me in the right direction—but I wasn't able to verify Life magazines previous target audience.

However, some ads I've come across in the 1953 Life magazine seemed to be geared towards women. And because, at the time, women were seen as homemakers and being in the home during the say it is possible that a secondary audience for Life in the 50s to be middle-aged white women or the women married to their main target audience.

Message

"Sun-Maid Raisins are tops for between–meal energy!"

"Always fresh, tempting and delicious!"

"Ask your grocer for the Sun-Maid Thrift-I-Pack—Six handy pocket packs at today's new low price!"

Three separate messages. The first appeals to the booming economy of the 50s. More expendable income meant—and usually still means—the purchasing of more non-necessities, in this case Sun-Maid Raisins.

The second message utilizes the persuasion tactic of pathos—an appeal to emotion. Yes, "fresh, tempting and delicious" might not make you think of an emotional appeal right away, but Sun-Maid strategically included "tempting" in its list of descriptors. Snacks can be seen as temptation—tempting you to eat them before your meal, tempting you to cheat on the diet you just started, tempting you to continue eating them even though you're full, etc. Sun-Maid utilized the ease of the "pocket packs" to appeal to consumers.

The third message is a CTA, or a call to action. Instead of leaving them with how delicious the raisins are, Sun-Maid pushes consumers to actively seek out the newest version of the product.

Design

Like it is with print ads now, color ads tend to cost more than black-and-white ads. This could be why Sun-Maid opted for a colorless advertisement.

This 1950s ad uses personification to entice the audience. By having the box of raisins, or the character on the logo, "speak" the main message of the ad—seen through the speech bubble—Sun-Maid insinuates the personability of the company; therefore, evoking an emotional response of warmth and comfortability within consumers.

The ad design puts emphasis on the box and logo of Sun-Maid raisins. There is also obvious hierarchy within the typography helping us discern which message is most important.

2019's New Campaign

Apparently Millenials are Killing the Raisin Industry Now Too?

I'm sure you remember the craze of articles that have come out in the past year or so. A lot of them follow the title sequence "Millennials are killing ______" or "Millenials have killed _____." Personally, I found a lot of those articles to be hilarious, but they got tired after a while.

Two of the sources I found about the newest ad campaign for Sun-Maid claim that millenials are killing the raisin industry, but this time it's kind of true.

Business Insider goes as far as saying "millenials hate raisins," but I doubt that ALL millenials dislike wrinkly grapes (I'm guilty of hating raisins, sorry not sorry). Of the two articles, I think I like Fast Company's title better: "Big Raisin is not going to let millenials kill it off without a fight"—very on brand with the more current read articles about "Big Pharma" and "Big Data."

This blame on millenials is a great segway into the target audience of the newest campaign. Any guesses for Sun-Maid's new target audience?

Target Audience

Please tell me you guessed millenials. If you didn't I'm a little disappointed.

Yup, Sun-Maid is attempting to woo us millenials back into our beloved Kindergarten snacking habits. Hence the newest campaign: "Grow Young."

According to Business Insider,

"Data from the National Consumer Panel (NCP)...shows over the past year, the majority of consumers in the survey that were buying raisins were older generations—baby boomers and seniors."

Fast Company tacks on parents to that list—because kids still like raisins.

The current target audience for this campaign consists of millennials (anyone born between 1981 and 1996), Gen Z (anyone born 1997 and on) and, still, parents. Ages range for this audience, according to Pew Research Center, is 7–38 (anyone born from 1981 to now). We can narrow that even further to cap it at those who potentially have disposable income. Since people can get hired as young as 14 in some areas, I'll assume the new audience for Sun-Maid is anyone 14–38.

Message

Nostalgia and the child in all of us. That's what I see in this new campaign. There's an underlying theme of pathos again, like that in the 1950s ad but geared in a different direction. Instead of talking to consumers about the tempting and delicious flavor of the raisins, Sun-Maid is getting consumers to look longingly at the past and how much easier and brighter childhood was.

Design

With the advancement of technology, obviously, comes the advancement of advertising. Print ads are not as big, or as trackable, as tv spots are in today's ad world. Despite this massive change in medium, Sun-Maid pushes pathos even more with the addition of visuals that remind people of childhood. Whether you lived through some of these scenarios, watched kids experience them or raised kids and lived through the scenarios with them, there's an underlying unity and nostalgia about the commercial.

Here's Sun-Maid's "Grow Young" 30-second spot.

Let's talk script.

Did you get tired of how often they repeated "remember" within 30-seconds? Did you even notice or were you too busy watching the visuals and keeping up with the storyline? Did you notice they repeated the phrase "eating Sun-Maid raisins" twice? Even though there was a slight change in the wording, that phrase was included at the beginning and end of the spot. In between those phrases, Sun-Maid gets viewers to "remember" childhood events and scenarios in order to evoke nostalgia.

Repetition is a design principle, plus it just helps get the point across. The Interaction Design Foundation explains repetition in messages like this: if there is a message you want your customers to remember "you'll want to tell them that [message] on more that one occasion if you want the message to stick...we [consumers] retain information better the more often we encounter it and internalize it."

In Conclusion

Sun-Maid is trying to become relevant again because millennials are killing the raisin industry.

That's a part of this, but a more important note is the change in audience, message and design were brought about by changes in environment, society and technology. This may be an obvious note but when you compare two advertisements from the same brand with only 60 years difference, you can still be amazed at the amount of change and growth that has happened—to both the company and our society.

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