As CMO of Pete & Gerry’s Organics, Phyllis Rothschild is on a mission to educate premium egg consumers to better understand how to find value and quality when shopping for eggs.
Pete & Gerry’s has a number of brands including: Pete & Gerry’s Pasture-Raised Eggs, Pete & Gerry’s Organic and Nellie’s Free Range. The company is focused on working with family farmers to offer high quality and nutritious eggs.
“We know from research that there’s a huge amount of confusion when consumers are shopping in the egg aisle just because of the terminology and phrasing,” says Rothschild. “The more educated a consumer is about the category, the more she’s likely to make a choice that’s better quality, higher premium and more oriented toward humane treatment of hens.”
Late last year, the company launched its “(Almost) The Wildest Eggs You Can Get” campaign to celebrate securing national distribution for its Pete & Gerry’s Pasture-Raised Eggs—now available at major retailers including: Whole Foods, Kroger, Stop & Shop, Shaws, Hannaford, and The Giant Company.
Last month, the company launched its “Life’s Better Out Here” campaign in support of its Nellie’s Free Range line, and has redesigned the packaging to empower consumers to make better selections at shelf, as well as share stories about Nellie’s Free Range brand including a critical comparison between cage free and free range, and hen trivia. “These little quizzes help people to understand more about hens and the fact that these are living beings that you want to treat well and have good welfare,” explains Rothschild.
Additionally, the company has created the Nellie’s Free Range Kitchen vibes playlist on Spotify, as well as little hen puns, similar to Dad jokes. “Our goal is really to drive engagement, to get consumers to engage with the brand, learn about us, learn about hen welfare and then make a choice at shelf,” says Rothschild. “You want to build brand awareness so that consumers are looking for the brand when it comes to eggs.”
This summer, Pete & Gerry’s is the official egg of Minor League Baseball. “We are working across 60 different clubs in the minor league, doing activations in the field and also advertising on their jumbotrons, as well as on their screens in the stadiums and on their digital channels,” explains Rothschild. “We have our mascot Shelly, who gets to go to the games and dance with the fans and get people to not only be excited about our eggs, but also just learn a little bit more about them.”
Brand Innovators caught up with Rothschild from her office in the Boston area to talk about the new campaign, educating consumers on premium eggs and innovation in the egg category.
Can you talk about the “Life’s Better Out Here” campaign?
This is a pivotal milestone moment for the Nellie’s brand. It gives us a chance to refresh the audience that’s buying free range eggs. The confusion is primarily the distinction between cage free and free range. It’s our real emphasis on trying to get people to understand without them needing a PhD in egg science to really, truly understand the difference. “Life’s Better Out Here captures that sentiment of the fact that hens get to go outside. The number one distinction between cage free and free range is that the hens have access to the outdoors. They can go live and behave like hens.
With Nellie’s free range relaunch, our creative for the “Life’s Better Out Here” campaign makes that parallel between how critical it is for your hens to get outside, just like it’s critical for you and your families to go outside, spread your wings and move around in the outdoors and enjoy the sunshine.
Can you talk about how you work with your retail partners to help get your message out? We strive to be category captains in the egg aisle. Pete & Gerry’s has invested a lot in research and insights so that we can bring retailers the latest on how consumers are shopping the category––what do they care about, what are some of their priorities and needs? Consumers need to know what’s happening in pasture raised, what’s happening in organic, what’s happening in free range so that they understand the value of keeping our brands on shelf and really educating the consumer.
We’ve also partnered with customers about in-store signage and in-store education that allows customers to compare across those different categories––cage free, free range and pasture raised. These simple-to-use terms are simpler to understand so that the consumer can make a more educated choice at shelf.
I hear you saying “she” a lot. Are women your target demographic or who are you trying to reach and how do you reach your particular audiences?
It does tend to be the women who are the head of the household purchasing, but there are just as many men who are purchasing and probably even more so in our organic line. For Nellie’s, the free range buyer is typically a woman. She is often the head of a family. She wants some access to high quality products, but is maybe a little more price sensitive. She’s that gateway entry into premium with an accessible price point, but still wants to check a lot of boxes with regard to health, with regard to hen welfare, with regard to taste and quality and nutrition. She’s looking for that full package.
For Pete & Gerry’s, we have the organic buyer, which really is the shortcut for nutrition and health and wellness. They see organic as the best care for the hen and best care for the eggs––what they view as gunk free, not getting anything into their eggs that they wouldn’t want to put in their bodies. It’s also families that consume a lot of eggs, so they want to make sure they’re the healthiest possible. And then there’s the pasture-raised buyer. We have a Pete & Gerry’s pasture-raised line. That person tends to be very, very conscious of animal welfare. She can actually cite 108 square feet per hen of outdoor space that is required under our pasture-raised standards.
Eggs have been hit particularly hard by inflation. Can you talk about how you’re navigating that with consumers?
It was a little bit of a double whammy for the egg category and for poultry in general, because not only was there the challenge with the supply chain and increase in the price of grain, which is the primary source of feed for most hens, but also the avian influenza that took over the U.S. hit supply pretty significantly. Because of that lack of supply, you saw the prices go up. That primarily hit the commodity end of the egg category. You saw prices increase in more of the caged and the cage free categories, which is the by far and away dominant sales in the U.S.
Those prices increased and closed the gap between the commodity and the premium egg. In our case, it actually wasn’t hit as hard because of our family farm model. We have a diversity of locations, as well as multiple smaller farms from Maine to Oklahoma. We have over 200 in our network. The practices that we keep with regard to security and biosecurity of our farms allowed us to not be hit by avian influenza.
But what did happen is the consumer saw that the gap between the commodity and the premium closed. She probably took a step back and said, well, if I’m going to be spending this much more on my dozen eggs, shouldn’t I make a quality purchase? Once there was a trial, there were a lot more people who were willing to stay in that premium space. Our goal is to keep them there as they step up their purchases.
Can you talk about how your background has helped prepare you for the CMO role?
I’ve spent approximately 30 years in marketing and branding consulting. I worked in a variety of different consulting firms, whether it was Prophet Brand Strategies or McKinsey, where I led branding and loyalty. I was able to be exposed to many, many different challenges, situations, and learn from the inside out what was happening from the dynamics of a company to make choices and decisions that would encourage growth and actually align the marketing strategy with the overall business strategy, which is exactly what we’re trying to do at Pete & Gerry’s.
We want more people to choose our brands and that is a business decision because we know that that will increase our sales and increase our share of both the premium and the overall egg category. I was brought in to help achieve that and align marketing strategy with business strategy. I’ve spent my life loving brands and I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a brand powerful and how to do brand storytelling in a way that’s compelling,engaging and relevant to the consumer target.
How are you thinking about innovation?
The egg category is constantly changing. In some ways, you could look at it like other dairy categories where there was a growth from commodity only, whether it was milk or yogurt, to much more diversification and understanding of consumer needs. We’re continuing to monitor consumer needs and priorities and then address those through innovation. We have a few items that are what we would call more CPG. Nellie’s Free Range has a hard boiled line. We also have egg bites.
So continuously understanding the flavor, the protein content and how to drive those. We’re always looking at things with regard to packaging and more convenience so that consumers can enjoy our products on-the-go and still be consuming healthy protein sources that taste great. We’re constantly exploring new opportunities in those spaces, too. Pete & Gerry’s has liquid egg whites. What are different sizes and forms that can be delivered? What are the different types that can be delivered? Our goal is to launch those in the coming year.
