Kraft: Trying to Put ‘Moist’ Under the Spotlight
Hi friends, are you stocking up your pantry with some Kraft Mayonnaise? While it’s freezy outside, let’s have some potato salad and be a happy couch potato reading this blog about Kraft’s new search hacking plan.
Kraft with its ‘Real Moist’ Mayo
Kraft Heinz, the American condiment marketer, sent a giant tub of mayo with a “Real Moist” logo to Merriam-Webster’s headquarters earlier this week (look at this bottle of Mayo, it will last for years). The company announced its goal for the word ‘Moist’ to win the Word of the Year prize, calling fans for help to boost the term’s search engine ranking.
It’s Tactics on Twitch
Also, Kraft, on Nov 18, is hosting a “Search-A-Thon” livestream on Twitch, partnering with gaming influencers to encourage viewers to search the term ‘moist’ as much as possible. The brand will also run social ads with a #SearchMoist hashtag on TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit to get support.
Now, you may wonder, as I did, what is Twitch? FYI for all the non-gamers here, Twitch is a video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, offering primarily broadcasts of esports competitions. It’s now a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. As of 2023, it has 140 million monthly active users (wow, that’s what percent of the world population?). By employing all these digital platforms, Kraft is apparently trying to reach the Gen-Zers. Will the brand succeed and generate a trend they want? Let’s wait and see.
Why the Word ‘Moist’?
As a non-native English speaker, I pondered, why this word? This word doesn’t seem to have too strong a tie to the brand. So, I consulted my best friend, Google. To my surprise, American people seem to have some strong sentiment toward this word. It was serious enough that a cognitive psychologist named Paul Thibodeau even conducted a series of experiments to determine why people hated this word. Also, now I learned that this sentiment is called Word Aversion. Hmmm…so is Kraft trying to exploit this word aversion as a marketing strategy to create some social network spur?
Is It a Good Marketing Strategy?
Now that I see their plan, I, like every other savvy marketer, start to wonder if it will work. It seems very risky for Kraft to relate its brand to a word people hold negative sentiment against. Intuitively, wouldn’t people start connecting Kraft’s brand name to the word ‘moist’ and the negative feeling it brings? I’m a bit worried, but after all, I’m curious to see the campaign results. If you are also curious, please stay tuned, and I’ll keep you updated!
