What the Salad Dressing Aisle Can Teach Us About Brand Blocking and Category Ownership.

Video Transcript

Hello everybody. It is Shopping with Christie and I am taking a look today at the salad dressing set here at my Super Target in Colorado. A couple of things that I notice, and generally when I’m looking at a category, one of the first things I look at is how much real estate that category actually has.

You can usually tell retailer sets are in 4-foot sections, so it’s easy to see. Here’s one, two, three—that’s three 4-foot sections. My math would say that’s 12 feet. Thank you, elementary school math. Anyway, this is a 12-foot set, and generally speaking, it’s kind of split up into three sections.

The very first thing I noticed after the size of the set is how it’s oriented. Very clearly, they have it in brand blocks. You can see that. In this world, it’s advantageous to consider owning a particular color. Those brands that do are popping much more.

You can see right here—Brianna’s. I see that brand really well. Market Pantry also does very well here. Olive Garden has that core look. And then Kraft—well, they’re not really a brand block. They just have a huge amount of Caesar salad dressing there.

If I were a brand in this set, I would consider moving toward a more brand-blocked look. Just a thought. Even here, you can see Skinny Girl. I know this brand doesn’t do as high volume, but at least you see three SKUs in a row. That helps them show up.

The other thing I want to point out is the overall real estate of the category. Again, one, two, three—that’s three 4-foot sets, or 12 feet. And you come over here, and oh my gosh. I actually already talked about ranch and America’s love affair with it in another video recently, but look at this.

Hidden Valley Ranch has just crushed it. It’s got almost an entire third of the category. And I’m not even sure who owns this smaller brand next to it—“by the makers of Hidden Valley.” How did these three SKUs get in here? Who owns this brand? Kraft Heinz. Oh, so they got three little products in here. Good job, Kraft Heinz.

Anyway, Hidden Valley has almost an entire third of the set. I would argue one of the reasons for that is because this brand has two things the others do not.

Number one: a fairly consistent brand block. It stands out. It’s one brand with that green look and the ranch visual that’s distinctive to them.

Number two: form innovation. If there’s a way to use or serve ranch, Hidden Valley offers it. They are just owning ranch. They could have gone into other flavors—and they do have some variations—but it’s always ranch.

You can see spicy ranch, dairy-free ranch, even upside-down bottles like Chipotle Ranch. Whether it’s a multi-serve bottle, a huge squeeze bottle, or a standard dressing bottle with a flip top, they’ve got it covered. They even have seasoning and dip mixes, snack cups, and recipe mixes.

They’re literally telling you: infinite possibilities. That’s the story of Hidden Valley Ranch. I love it. I have a real love affair with this brand right now.

Another thing I noticed—and I actually saw this over here too—is that whoever merchandised these products seems to have stocked the squeeze bottles upside down. Maybe it’s a new reset because it all looks very neat, but as a marketer and someone deep into packaging and graphics, that would drive me crazy.

You can see it with Hidden Valley, and again over here with Best Foods and Hellmann’s mayonnaise—upside down. For whatever reason, it looks like Super Targets are putting squeeze bottles that way.

All right, this is making me very hungry for salad and very hungry for ranch. So I’m going to buy more ranch because that’s how much I love it.

Okay, bye everybody.