Lärabar

Nina Berry, Alex Cole, Ryan Cook,

Austin Eacho & Trevor Fyfe
Table of Contents
3. Executive Summary 18. Brand Value Proposition
4-6. Meet the Team 19. Big Idea
7. Agency Statement 20. Campaign Elements
8. History of Lärabar 21. Appeal and Execution
9. Objectives 22. Media Objectives
10. Target Personas 23. Media Budget
11. SWOT Analysis 24. Media Timeline
12-13. Competitor Analysis 25. Integration Map
14. Research Objectives 26-31. Media Channels
15-16. Research Summaries 32-38. Ad Content
17. Environmental Analysis 39-40. References

2
Executive Summary
Lärabar’s biggest opportunity in the millennial market is a lack of awareness.
Lärabar provides several benefits that are desirable to today’s consumers. Our
plan is to build awareness of the Lärabar brand by running advertisements
through several channels and a contest. Our advertisements are centered
around our big idea of showing joyous life events while substituting a key
element of the event with a Lärabar. This campaign will be encompassed with
our slogan “Real Food, Real Life.” From here, we will build brand activation by
running a contest for consumers to show us Lärabars in their life events using
the hashtag #LärabarLife. We will extend our slogan for the contest period to,
“Real Food, Real Life, Real Trip,” and we will award the winner a trip for two to
San Diego.

3
Meet the team:
Purple Dukes
4
 Meet the Team
Meet Trevor. He is a Junior Marketing major, pursuing a
minor in Global Supply Chain Management at James
Madison University. He is the Vice President of Delta
Sigma Phi Fraternity on campus. His role in the project
was to be a researcher and creative strategist. His favorite
bar is Cashew Cookie.

Meet Austin. He is a Junior Marketing Major with a

Concentration in Sales. His role in the project was a to be a
researcher and creative strategist. He enjoys working on
cars, trucks and motorcycles. His favorite Lärabar is the
Mint Chip Brownie and Blueberry Muffin.

5
 Meet the Team
Meet Ryan. He is a Marketing
major. He has an extensive
background in restaurant
management and he attended
West Virginia University before
coming to JMU. He is the creative
leader . His favorite bar flavor is
Coconut Cream Pie.

Meet Alex. She is a Marketing Meet Nina. She is a double major

major with a Sales Concentration in IBUS & Spanish. She currently
and a minor in Human Resource works for COB as a MAP in the
Development. She is involved in Pi Advising Office. She is accepting a
Sigma Epsilon and Student position at Elephant Insurance as
Ambassadors. In this project, her a Marketing Coordinator. She was
role was team leader and media the primary researcher and editor.
planner. Her favorite flavor is the Her favorite bar is Strawberry
lemon bar. Spinach Cashew.
6
Agency Statement
We are the Purple Dukes, a marketing agency
located in New York City, New York, specifically in
Manhattan. For the past 3 years, we have been
recognized as one of the top agencies in the country
in terms of ROI. Our team consists of motivated and
creative individuals who have an extreme passion for
creating IMC campaigns. We believe in pushing the
envelope to create the ultimate campaigns for our
clients.

7
 History of Lärabar
After hiking the rockies in 2000, Lara Merriken decided to devote her
time to creating a healthy yet delicious snack bar. The purpose of the
company, was to create delicious snacks with less than 10 wholesome
ingredients and no added sugar. She started offering them to friends and
family for initial feedback. By March, 2003 Lärabars officially hit the shelf
offering 5 different flavors made and packaged all by Lara. In one year's time
she had sold one million bars, established a headquarters and put together a
marketing and testing team. In the 2 years following, Lara would release 8
new flavors. In 2008 Lärabars was purchased by General Mills for a rumored
50 million. Lärabars continued to release new flavors every year and in 2012
they released their Uber bars which contain fruits and nuts. The following
year the ALT bar was released which was their first protein bar. In 2013,
Renola was released, containing fruits,seeds, and nuts. Now there are over 30
different flavors as well as 5 different variations. To this day all bars have
minimal ingredients and are sourced from fair trade certified farmers to
benefit everyone involved in the process.

Lärabars clean Milestone of 1

The Idea for a
colorful logo million bars Uber Bars
Healthy Snack
and shape is have been sold Released Lärabar
Bar Begins
created
2001 2003 2008 2013

2000 2002 2004 2012 Renola Bars

2018
Lärabar is Lärabars Lärabars are are Released
deemed the released in the purchased by
official name first stores General Mills
Objectives
◂ Awareness: To increase the number of 18-24 year olds by 40% by September
1, 2018, who live health-conscious lifestyles & recall Lärabar in their evoked set.
◂ Comprehension: To have 30% of the 18-24 year old millennials know one
attribute of Lärabar such as it’s vegan, is filled with wholesome ingredients,
fair-trade, inexpensive, variety of flavors, high protein and fiber levels, and
non-GMO by November 1, 2018.
◂ Conviction: To have 15% of millennials aged 18-24 develop a strong
attachment to our product and brand loyalty by January 1, 2019. Also,
increase our Instagram following from 89,000 to over 100,000, and Twitter
following from 42,000 to 60,000 by June 1, 2019.
◂ Action: To increase the number of 18-24 year old Millennials who purchase
our product to 7% by June 1, 2019.

9
 Target Personas
Sarah the Student, 19 years old
nursing student. She studies hard
all week buts lets loose with
friends on the weekends. She is
very social and involved on her
campus. Conscious of what she
eats but not too restrictive.
Spends a lot of time in between
classes looking at her Instagram,
Twitter, and Facebook feeds and
gets email notifications so she
stays up to date.
Peter the Professional, 22 years
old. He is a recent grad and ready
to begin the next stage of his life.
He is in a serious relationship and
has just landed the job of his
dreams. Life has quickly begun to
speed up as he tries to meet the
demands of his new working life
and deal with hitting strict
deadlines. Gone are the college
days and the dorm life and here Heather the Hippie, 24 years old,
grad student at U.C. Berkley, lives a
are the days of bills,
vegan lifestyle and loves to promote
self-sufficiency and loan her lifestyle on her second instagram
repayment. called “Heather’s Health.” She is easily
offended by meat eaters and aspires
to participate in PETA rallies.
Regularly reads Vegan blogs such as
“Oh My Veggies,” “Pickles and Honey”
and “Oh Lady Cakes.” Also watches
vegan vlogs such as “Jen T. Fell” a
vegan mom who lives in her van.
Attends yoga and pilates 5 times a
week and blogs about the struggle of
getting enough protein on a vegan
diet. 10
SWOT Analysis
Strengths Opportunities
◂ Non-GMO ◂ Launch marketing campaign
◂ Less than 10 ingredients targeting millennials
◂ Gluten Free ◂ Spread awareness to vegan &
◂ Dairy Free health conscious community
◂ Soy Free ◂ Surpass Nutri-Grain bars to
◂ Kosher become 2nd highest in sales.13
◂ Fair Trade ◂

◂ Low Price

Weaknesses Threats
◂ Not organic ◂ Start-up companies creating
◂ High in fruit sugar similar products with few
◂ Strong date taste ingredients

11
 Competitor Analysis

Power Crunch
● The most expensive out of competition
● The packaging and website have a very
modern feel
● Is very high in protein and low in carbs
● Has a bar called “snap stick” specifically for
Kashi Bar kids
● Has 24 flavors
○ Has a GOLean option for the consumer who is
trying to lose weight and watch their diet
● Their website says “Innovative nutrition is our
approach to food”
○ “It means we value whole food and put the
inherent nutrition of food first when
considering every ingredient. It means we
make our food with a plants-first mindset. It
means we value not just the foods we make,
but also how we make them by being
progressive and mindful of sustainable and
ethical farming practices.”
12
 Competitor Analysis

Honey Nut Cheerios Bar

● Most popular out of the competitors; has a large
youtube following dedicated to recreating the
Bar with their own recipe.
● Most unhealthy in terms of overall ingredients
(16g of sugar)

RX Bar
● Only have a few common ingredients; dates,
egg whites, nuts, sea salt.
● There are only 11 flavors of the RXBar (as of
Nov. 17th)7
● A blogger ranked the 11 flavors from worst
(coffee chocolate) to best (sea salt chocolate)7
● Has a trendy and cool package that shows
the total number of ingredients

13
Research
Objectives
◂ Learn the factors that our target market takes into account when
making a purchase decision, including: price, taste, heathiness, etc.
◂ Determine how our target market consumes media and how we
can use this information to reach them
◂ Discover how the target market makes purchases (online, in store,
etc.)

14
 Secondary Research Summary
Millennials place heavy emphasis on the
importance of healthiness in their food choices.
Research has shown that they associate fewer
ingredients with healthier foods¹0. They also prefer
their food to be organic¹0. However, this market is a
mix of younger adults and college students who
often have significantly lower disposable incomes
than Generation X, making the purchase of organic
products more difficult.
This target market consumes media in a
different manner than their predecessors. Millennials
are less bothered by ads than Generation X, claiming
that ads are acceptable as long as content is free19.
The problem for advertisers lies in which form of
media to use to reach Millennials, who have proven
to be one of the most distracted audiences.
Millennials are less likely to view ads
on television. While ads do not bother them they often
don’t watch commercials on tv because they are on their
phones19.
A very effective way to reach the target market is
through social media instead of through television.
Millennial spend a significant amount of time on social
media following friends, family and social media stars.
Social media stars are growing in popularity and often
have higher approval ratings than typical celebrities for
this market, making them a better option for marketers
than athletes or movie stars to reach millennials.19.
While millennials receive most of their media.
intake online they generally don’t make their grocery
purchases online. The vast majority, approximately 90%,
prefer to purchase their groceries in a physical store9.
15
 Primary Research Summary
Survey of 70 millennials aged 18-24*. Familiar with No
Have tried
Lärabar name Lärabar
Results: Yes
◂ Only 34.3% of the research group had heard of Lärabar and
only 15.7% had tried Lärabar.
◂ Of those who had tried Lärabar, the majority claimed they
learned about Lärabar through recommendations of friends
and family (word of mouth).
◂ Of those who had tried it they liked that the bars were made
with simple ingredients
◂ The most important attribute appears to be low cost.

16
 Environmental Analysis
Trends
There are three trends affecting the snack bar industry:
● Growing demand for organic snacks:17
Consumers have become wary of artificial ingredients
and are looking for premade, organic snacks.18 Snack
bars fill this need and many are made with simple
ingredients such as: organically labeled grains, fruits
and vegetables. This trend will help shape the
development and growth of the snack bar industry.
● Growing demand for vegan snacks:17
Another increasing popularity trend is veganism.
This is the practice of eating food void of any animal
products. This is an area snack bars excel at with their
simple ingredients and should again help boost sales
● Growing demand for high-protein, high fiber
snacks:18
Snack bars vary with in this field. Those made with a
base of whole fruits will carry the high fiber desired but
could be lacking in the protein. Adding ingredients such
as nuts and pea protein are easy ways to increase
protein in snack bars.18

Prediction
The snack bar industry will continue to see growth thanks to these trends with a compound annual growth rate of
6.7%. By 2021 the snack bar market is expected to increase to $7631.4 million. 18

17
Brand Value Proposition

Emotional:
With Lärabar being fair trade and non-gmo, consumers will be happy to
know they are helping out with every purchase. By supporting a fair trade
brand, consumers help combat violence and injustices around the world.
Buying non-gmo allows for more biodiversity in agriculture and helps
prevent environmental damage that can arise from the use of gmo crops.

Functional:
Lärabar provides a quick, affordable snack for people on the go. Lärabar fills
many wants and needs of today’s consumers. Lärabar is gluten free,
non-gmo, fair trade, preservative free, along with other attributes, all while
being a price leader in the market.

Self Expressive:
The healthy and environmentally friendly aspects of Lärabar, allows
consumers to show others that they care and are actively participating in
finding a solution to the world’s issues.
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Big Idea
◂ We will show people during exciting life
events while substituting Lärabar in for
the object/person/thing that is creating
the cause of celebration. The
substitution will invoke feelings of
humor. This will leave a memorable
impact on the consumers so they think
about Lärabars leading them to
purchase.

◂ Slogan: Real Food. Real Life.

19
Campaign Elements
Slogan- Lärabar: Real Food. Real Life.
Print/Digital/T.V. Campaign: Have a variety of millenials pictured in exciting occasions
feeling and looking joyous, and replace the important objects with Lärabars. Will launch a
social media campaign with #LärabarLife encouraging consumers incorporating
Lärabars into exciting moments in their lives and capturing the moment.
Concepts:
◂ Example 1: Have a college student graduating, one student received their diploma,
which is replaced with a Lärabar, and is at the end of the stage holding it in the air
celebrating. Another student is in the act of receiving their diploma and is smiling
joyously.
◂ Example 2: Have a millenial opening a package on Christmas, showing extreme
excitement and it’s filled with Lärabars, will also do a Thanksgiving series and other
major holidays.
◂ Example 3: Have a guy proposing to a girl, the box has a Lärabar in it. The girl will
respond ecstatically and say yes. The ad ends on a kiss and Real Food. Real Life.

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Appeal & Execution

Appeal: Emotional
Our ad campaign uses real life situations and creates humor
by incorporating Lärabars in an unexpected way.

Execution: Humor
Our ads will consist of images, videos, and a commercial of
occasions millennials could easily fit themselves into and the
humor comes from the important objects being replaced
with a Lärabar.

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Media Objectives
Target Market: Our primary target audience consist of health conscious
millennials, men and women, ages 18-24. Given the demographic of our target
audience, we will be using a wide variety of media channels to target our market.

Media Channels: We want to utilize Ad Content: A large part of our

internet and interactive media as our
primary means of advertising due to
the popularity of this media to our
target audience. The goal is to place
the ads in front of our audience in their
day-to-day lives to create familiarity
with Lärabar.
campaign is creating awareness of
Lärabar. We have chosen to use
humor, as this is very effective to create
memorability and translates well with
our target market.

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 Media Budget
Source Cost Impressions Amount Allocated
TV & Production

Commercial Video Cost of production: $410,000

(2 consistent ones, 30 second video: $100,000
and a series of 4 15 second seasonal video: $52,000
seasonal ones)

ABC Cost to air in season finale: $280,000 7.8 Million $280,000

$35 CPM 14,857,143 $520,000

Total Impressions:
$3.99 CPM $0.19 CPC 169,779,287 $1,000,000
(1% CTR: 1,697,793 clks) 637,177,796
Internet/Interactive

$0.80 CPM $6.72 CPM 17,605,633 $400,000 Total Amount

Spent: $5,000000
$20 Photo ad CPM 20,000,000 $400,000

$0.15 Per Video 6,670,000 $1,000,000

$10,000 Cost of Prize (Trip) Twitter: 42,000 Followers $10,000

Instagram: 90,400 Followers

BuzzFeed: $20,000 per sponsored article BuzzFeed: 317,000,000 BuzzFeed: $480,000

we will sponsor 24 (Frequency Approximately 2.38)
Pandora: $6 CPM Pandora: 83,333,333 Pandora: $500,000
23
Media Timeline

24
Integration Map
Contest

Commercial
Commercial

Website
Internet
Display
Ads

25
1.
Media Channels
 Streaming Ads
We will have a 6 second ad shown before videos that are being watched by
individuals within our target market. Our targeting will be based on
demographics such as age (18-21 year olds), interests (fitness, vegan, healthy
recipes, environmentally friendly, gaming), and keywords. We will rotate between
the graduation video and our seasonal ads. Once the proposal ad airs on The
Bachelor season finale in March, that ad will be aired as well.

We will air our 30 second graduation ad and our 15 second seasonal ads in a burst
scheduling format that coincides with our seasonal ads. We chose this channel
because hulu has the largest streaming library with over 2 times the amount of any
other library.5 Therefore, they have a large audience with 33 million users watching
ads and 37% of their viewers are millennials. Over the course of the year we expect
to make 14,857,143 impressions through this channel.14

27
 Display Ads
BuzzFeed has a click through rate
of 10-20 times higher than the
average banner ad which led us
to select this channel.15 The cost is
$20,000 per sponsored article, so
we are sponsoring 24 articles
throughout the year. Our
sponsored articles will be on
topics about fitness, healthy
recipes and health news, along
with pop culture articles we
expect our target market to be
reading.
For this channel we will display a
300 x 600 pixel desktop banner
and a 300 x 250 pixel mobile
banner ad weekly. All of the ads
we are creating will be presented
on this channel in image form.
Over 90% of Pandora listeners are
exposed to these ads as only 6% of
users pay for an ad free
subscription which led us to
choose this channel.6
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 Social Media Ads

We will launch both video and image ads on Facebook. The image ads will
be 1,200 x 628 pixels and the video ads will be under 4 GB.16 All of our
seasonal ads, our graduation ad, and the proposal ad after March will be
displayed throughout the course of the year. Our ads will be displayed
every other week.

We will use square images with a resolution of 1936 x 1936 pixels.2 Similar to
Facebook our seasonal ads, our graduation ad, and the proposal ad after
March will be displayed throughout the course of the year. We will be
displaying these ads on alternating weeks coinciding with Facebook.

We will display image ads with the dimensions of 800 x 800 pixels.3 These
ads will be displayed throughout the entire year rotating between our
graduation ad, seasonal ads, and then proposal ads.

29
Television

We will be airing our proposal commercial

on ABC during the season finale of the
Bachelor. This television show is very
popular among our audience and the total
viewers for the most recent season finale
totaled 7.8 million viewers with a rating of
2.2 amongst its 18-49 year old viewers.11

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Ad Content
Graduation Storyboard Concept

32
Proposal Storyboard Concept

33
Fourth of July Storyboard Concept

Real Food. Real Life.

34
Halloween Storyboard Concept

35
Thanksgiving Storyboard Concept

36
Holiday/Gift Giving Storyboard Concept

37
Brand Activation [Contest]
We will start launching the campaign January 1, 2019 that will end on February 28, 2019. Our consumers
will use the hashtag #LärabarLife on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This will coincide with our
campaign slogan “Real Food. Real Life.” by encouraging participants to post pictures of Lärabars in their
special moments in a humorous way. For example, a graduating student can post a picture of them
holding a Lärabar while dressed in their cap and gown. One winner of the contest will receive a 7 day, 6
night, all expenses paid adventure trip for two to San Diego where they can hike, surf and adventure
throughout Southern California. They will stay at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego and be
provided with a rental car for their travels within California. We will highlight the trip reward by extending
our slogan to “Real Food. Real Life. Real Trip.”

38
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3. How can we help? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-setup/advertiser-card-specifications.html
4. How Current Food Trends Rescued the Snack Bar. (2017, October 18). Retrieved March 18, 2018, from http://sciencemeetsfood.org/current-food-trends-rescued-snack-bar/
5. Hulu for Brands. (n.d.). Retrieved April 28, 2018, from https://www.hulu.com/advertising/
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http://adage.com/article/digital/embargo-june-27-pandora-partners-oracle-data-cloud-track-effectiveness-ads/309563/
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https://www.thekitchn.com/we-tried-every-rx-bar-flavor-and-ranked-them-249566
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www.supermarketnews.com/consumer-trends/millennials-looking-cleaner-labels-snacks.
11. Otterson, J. (2018, March 06). TV Ratings: 'The Bachelor' Finale Hits Season Highs. Retrieved from
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https://www.statista.com/statistics/189603/top-cereal-and-snack-bar-brands-in-the-united-states/
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www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2017/millennials-on-millennials-a-look-at-viewing-behavior-distraction-social-media-stars.html

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Credits

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