In Sweetener Ads, Cargill Focuses on Truvia’s Roots

The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Wednesday, October 10, 2012

In Sweetener Ads, Cargill Focuses on Truvia’s Roots

By STUART ELLIOTT

DECADES ago, campaigns from brands like Tetley and Chesterfield celebrated tea leaves and tobacco leaves. Now, a campaign for Truvia sweetener seeks to make a star of the leaves of the stevia plant.

Truvia, sold by Cargill, is a relatively new entry in the crowded category of low- and no-calorie sweeteners that are substitutes for sugar, among which are aspartame, saccharin, sucralose and, increasingly, plant-based sweeteners. Truvia, introduced in December 2008, competes against brands like Equal, Nectresse, NuStevia, NutraSweet, PureVia, Splenda, SugarTwin and Sweet’N Low.

Truvia is made from stevia leaf extract, which enables Cargill to bill the product as natural. To underline its origins, the brand name is pronounced TRUE-via, with an emphasis on the “true.”

The campaign for Truvia, now under way, was created by Creature, an agency in Seattle. The campaign also plays up the origin story by bringing in a new theme, “From nature, for sweetness,” replacing “Honestly sweet.”

The Truvia campaign, with a budget estimated at $30 million, is extensive, with television and radio commercials; print, online and out-of-home ads; signs in stores; coupons; sampling efforts; public relations and social media like Facebookand Twitter. Some ads introduce products like Truvia Baking Blend, which mixes stevia leaf extract with sugar.

The previous work for Truvia, by the Chicago office of Ogilvy & Mather, part of WPP, helped make Truvia the leader of the natural sweetener subset of the sugar substitute category, and No. 2 in the category over all, behind Splenda.

Creature had been working with Cargill “to help us explore the relationship between great coffee and Truvia,” said Mark Brooks, global consumer products director for the Truvia brand at Cargill in Wayzata, Minn., based on Creature’s campaigns for Seattle’s Best, a coffee brand sold by Starbucks.

That led to a print campaign, which ran in December, centered on the idea that because “coffee comes from plants,” Mr. Brooks said, “so should your sweetener.” Creature was subsequently asked to produce a Facebook app for Truvia with a Father’s Day theme.

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