Marie Callender's Frozen Foods Angers Bloggers

ConAgra, the parent company for Marie Callender's Food, attempted to pull a hidden camera advertising campaign on avid food bloggers. They hoped to see results similar to Domino's Pizza and Pizza Hut, where the consumers find out that the natural, organic-tasting pizza they were eating was in fact made by the chain restaurants!

ConAgra tricked bloggers into thinking that they would be served a four-course meal cooked by famous Chef, George Duran, but instead were served Marie Callender's new frozen food line. Before eating the meal, George Duran talked to the bloggers about the importance of natural foods and eating healthy. The bloggers agreed and chimed in about health concerns, calories and even allergies to ingredients that most artificial and/or processed foods contained.

Immediately after this discussion, they were each served four courses of the frozen food line while being video taped on a hidden camera.  The outcome was not as expected. In reality, the surprise was not on the bloggers, but on ConAgra! The food bloggers were outraged at the stunt ConAgra pulled on them. They felt betrayed and embarrassed. Most of the bloggers wrote about their excitement for the meal that was to be prepared by George Duran, and caused plenty of hype on the internet with their devoted followers. The bloggers then had to write the next day how they were tricked and did not get the privilege of eating Duran's food.

Instead of getting plenty of positive feedback that could help give stature and credibility to Marie Callender's new frozen food brand, the bloggers wrote negative reviews of the trickery and the company. Bloggers complained about being misled into eating processed food, overtake of calories and sodium and almost put at risk due to allergies.

The hidden camera advertising campaign was supposed to tape footage for five days; however, due to the complete backfire, ConAgra stopped filming on the fourth day. They also promised to never use the footage and apologized to the bloggers.

Room for improvement:

• Problem: Tough audience. Solution: ConAgra should have used different consumers for the hidden camera stunt. By definition, bloggers will think highly of their opinion, or else they would not write about it. Thus, deceiving them will obviously not go over well. Instead of using avid bloggers, ConAgra should have reached out to the people who follow cooking blogs, or perhaps even foodies on Tumblr who often repost food articles and recipes. 
• Problem: People feel alienated and degraded when tricked. Solution: Keep the consumers more in the know. The conversation about the importance of natural ingredients and high quality food before the dinner was taking things too far. This makes the bloggers feel idiotic and further tricked, which is a feeling ConAgra needed to stay away from.
• Problem: The hidden camera method was unsuccessful. Solution: Perhaps film a taste-testing where the consumers are blind-folded and have to tell the difference between Marie Callender's and food made by a famous chef. This is a great way to still use a similar hidden method; however, in this there is no feeling of trickery and deceit, only of pleasant surprise.

Next time ConAgra should leave the hidden cameras and artificial cheese up to the originals. Where do you think ConAgra's advertising plan went wrong?

Stamp of Disapproval,

The AD Judge

NYT Article