The National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association (NFRA) has hired PR firm Edelman to help enhance NFRA’s existing marketing campaigns and recharge efforts around promoting frozen and refrigerated dairy foods.
Efforts will officially kick off in January 2013 with a focus on expanding NFRA’s annual March Frozen Food Month promotion. Enhanced efforts will include “influencer engagement and robust media relations through an all-industry messaging platform and new and engaging ways to reach consumers,” according to Harrisburg, Pa.-based NFRA, which represents more than 400 food manufacturers, retailers, sales agents and distributors.
NFRA President and CEO Skip Shaw says that the current food environment has made it critical to implement a more aggressive and contemporary communications program.
“Consumers have become more food aware and (choosy) about what they put in their grocery carts,” said Shaw. “It’s important that NFRA and our industry communicate in a way that is more relevant to how people shop and eat.”
NFRA has been very successful promoting frozen and refrigerated foods for nearly three decades through signature programming like March Frozen Food Month and June Dairy Month, but the changing landscape poses new challenges.
“With an increasingly complex food environment and ever more discerning consumers, it’s time to elevate and contemporize our efforts,” added NFRA’s Chairman John Larsen of Safeway. “Edelman is the perfect partner for us because of their deep expertise in the food and nutrition space, longstanding client relationships across packaged goods, commodities and associations and cross-functional approach to communications.”
NFRA and Edelman will work to “tell the story” of frozen and refrigerated dairy foods in new, dynamic ways to more people and across more channels than ever.
Edelman’s first assignment is to spark new conversations to change perceptions of frozen foods. The roughly $6 billion packaged frozen food industry faces declining sales across several frozen food categories for various reasons, ranging from an aging population to shifts in how consumers are making food choices based on values, health and economics.
“Our goal is to aggressively enhance our existing marketing programs with solid strategy, messaging, tactics and tools that NFRA members and the industry can use in an effort to change consumer perceptions about frozen foods,” said Shaw.
