Who says grocery shopping has to be boring? Not Trader Joe's. In this fall-themed episode, Marla explores why Trader Joe's is a prime example of marketing excellence. From fun signage to affordable prices, this grocery chain has mastered the art of capturing our attention and tastebuds every season.
Then, she puts on her chef hat to rank Trader Joe's best three pumpkin spice items based on their packaging and of course, flavor. Enjoy!
Who says grocery shopping has to be boring? Not Trader Joe's. In this fall-themed episode, Marla explores why Trader Joe's is a prime example of marketing excellence. From fun signage to affordable prices, this grocery chain has mastered the art of capturing our attention and tastebuds every season.
Then, she puts on her chef hat to rank Trader Joe's best three pumpkin spice items based on their packaging and of course, flavor. Enjoy!
Welcome back to Not your Parents, pr, I am your host, marla, and I walked outside the other day, guys, and I have to say it's fall, it's finally fall. And I was really against fall for a very long time because I love summer, I hate the colds and I am the type that refuses for summer to end. But you know, I made it a little bit better. I walked into the aisles of my local Trader Joe's and once I got a whiff of cinnamon, saw the shiny pumpkins, I decided to just suck it up because fall is the best time of the year at Trader Joe's. So I will commit to the fall season, I will trade in my Birkenstocks for cute fall booties and I will just deal with it. But going back to my point about Trader Joe's, trader Joe's is a fantastic example of wonderful marketing and action. I've been wanting to do an episode about Trader Joe's for a very long time and I'm excited to do it for fall because I think it is the best time of year in the stores. So crazy fact I went on Google, because I'm a stellar researcher, and I found out that Trader Joe's has apparently been around since like 1967. So Trader Joe's is he's an old dude. But I just want to talk about three reasons why I believe Trader Joe's as a brand sets a great example for marketers. So number one they have affordable prices.
Speaker 1:
I live in Jersey City and grocery shopping is not cheap around here For me. I don't have a car, so I can't always drive to a more affordable store. I really have to go to things within walking distance. But the bummer is that local grocery stores will often jack up the prices because they know that they can. But when I have the time I take public transit. There's a Trader Joe's about 20 minutes away and I love going there to get big halls of things because it's affordable and it saves me in the long run.
Speaker 1:
So I'll give a personal anecdote here. If you haven't been to the Trader Joe's flower section yet, you should, because it is not only gorgeous, but they have a wide array of flowers and they're all at really affordable price points. So one of my friends who is planning her wedding has seriously considered and I hope she follows through with this is, instead of getting her bouquets from an expensive florist, she's considering getting her flowers at Trader Joe's and making her own arrangements, and I think it's a genius idea. It's affordable. They're beautiful, they're fresh. Trader Joe's has it all. So I did a little bit further investigating them to why they are so affordable. So on their website they mentioned that they buy direct from suppliers whenever possible and they buy in volume so they don't charge suppliers extra fees from putting the item on a shelf.
Speaker 1:
So I think that's a really cool move on their part and I think that often as an adult, like your biggest complaint about going to the grocery stores that it's expensive and the way that they figured out how to make their products affordable I think is super smart. When you can get your products down to a more accessible price point, it means that customers are more than likely to go out of their way to get your product. So for me, I'm like a great example here because I could walk to the store. That's a five-minute walk away, but it's a little bit more expensive. But I choose most times to hop on the light rail and go to Trader Joe's to get the better deal. So I'm going out of my way to give Trader Joe's my money. So that's example number one.
Speaker 1:
Moving on to example number two, trader Joe's has really fun whimsical signage. So if I had to choose one word to sum up Trader Joe's, it would be delightful. The problem that they address, as an adult, is that grocery store shopping can be really boring. And instead of making it boring they make it an experience. So when I just took my local trip to Trader Joe's, I couldn't help but notice the cool signage. So upon entering they had a cute little like Charlie Brown great pumpkin logo next to the stack of pumpkins which, like already brought a smile to my face. They also had a really funny sign as I was walking through one of the aisles that said let's give them pumpkin to talk about. So a parody on a famous song, really smart. And around the store they also have next to the seasonal items they have little like cartoon drawings of pumpkins to indicate that it's a seasonal item, so that you should get it out before it goes away. So I think they do a really good job of engaging the customer, whether it be on the signage or on their products themselves, which we'll get into in a little bit. But they really make it a fun experience from the moment you walk into the store to the moment you leave. So good job to Trader Joe's.
Speaker 1:
Alright, last but not least, number three. So we went through. They have accessible prices, they have fun signage and, number three, they have exclusive products. When I say the word exclusive, there are pros and cons to Trader Joe's. So exclusivity is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's also not necessarily a good thing, depending on the way you look at it. So, trader Joe's, there's no online ordering system, right, you can't get their products by clicking a button. They created an exclusive shopping experience so if you don't have easy access to travel to a nearby store or there's not one in your area, you just can't get the products, which is a bit of a bummer, but it is not necessarily a bad thing because it makes it a special experience when you do get to go. On the flip side of exclusivity the positive side is that their seasonal products are exclusive. So that's not a bad thing. It just makes sense.
Speaker 1:
When you have seasonal products, you are able to build anticipation, excitement for your consumer, and it also creates a sense of trust, because every fall you trust that they are going to put out the pumpkin items. You can guarantee you're going to get your favorite product. So one example from Trader Joe's is that me and one of my dear friends from Baltimore. Her name is Courtney shout out, courtney. We loved these lemon lavender cookies they had for springtime and we just devoured them. We were so excited about them and what it did was for me. It made me buy multiple boxes because I didn't want them to go away, but I knew they were going to when summer rolled around. But I wanted to hoard the boxes so that I could have them for longer, even when the season ended. So it's excellent marketing.
Speaker 1:
I would just say to wrap this up, for CPG brands, especially in the food beverage category, you always want to be putting out great products around the clock. Of course you want your staples, but there are so much opportunity in seasonal favorites. It gets people talking about it, it creates wonderful online chatter and it also creates fun podcast episodes like this, where I'm going to be ranking pumpkin goods. So, with that being said, we are going to dive into some of this season's best Trader Joe's products. Fun fact about me one of my favorite classes I took in college was about packaging and for my job now, I've written a ton of product descriptions, one of my favorites being for a Duke-Claw Brewing Company where I got to write beer labels and that was always so much fun. So I'm a packaging nerd. I'm a product description nerd, so I thought it would be fun to rank three of my favorite products from this season at Trader Joe's.
Speaker 1:
So before I get into these really quickly, I hope that you can use your imagination here. I hope that I am describing these products well, if you're just listening. But I am going to be creating a video about this on our Instagram at NotYourParentsPR, so I would head to Instagram for the video so you can see what I'm talking about. But I am going to try the best to create beautiful descriptions. So, without further ado, I am going to say what I like about the box and the packaging, what I would elevate about it if I could, or what I would change about it, and I'm just going to give it a ranking score out of 10. And this is totally up to my taste preferences. So you decide on your own and tell me what you think of these products.
Speaker 1:
So, number one they have these pumpkin-spiced teeny tiny pretzels. So I'm just going to hold it to the camera, even though you can't see it, but it's like a bright orange package if you see it in the store. So the product description reads pumpkin-spiced, teeny tiny pretzels with yogurt-flavored coating and crushed pumpkin-spiced pumpkin seeds. So what I love about the branding here is the use of the phrase teeny tiny. They could have just said tiny, they could have said many, but no, they made it adorable. So how I would elevate the branding.
Speaker 1:
So on the front of this package they have the pretzels, but they have them blown up so it has a little bit of a larger picture for the pretzel. So I actually have a big pet peeve with this for most brands. I really don't love when there's a potato chip bag and they make the potato chip huge and then it's like wait, that's not the size of it. I know I'm probably overreacting, but it's just a pet peeve, mine. So because they did this on the front, they stay at the bottom in large to show texture, which is so funny for a product that is all about being teeny tiny. So I thought that was interesting. But what I love, I flipped it around and they put the actual size on the back of the packaging, which I think is so smart. So they actually put the little. They put three little pretzels and you can see the actual size of it. So I thought that was a really good save on their end. So they get brownie points for that for me.
Speaker 1:
So anything else I would do to elevate the packaging. They show the pretzels as they are dipped in this yogurt pumpkin spice coating. But I might, if I was on their like marketing team, I think I would suggest showing what the pretzel looks like. You know, maybe like half dipped, so you could see what the coating really looks like, because sometimes it's a little bit hard to tell. But that's just my idea. So, moving on to the taste, ranking it out of 10, I am going to go with six out of 10. It's solid. I'm also not a huge pretzel person. I don't even know why I bought these in the first place, but the packaging got me. So I think it could use a little bit more pumpkin spice. And if you like their white yogurt covered pretzels, you will love this product. I think these also would go great on a charcuterie board. It's always fun to add in a little like salty sweet thing. But that is my ranking for that one.
Speaker 1:
Next up, we're going with number two, their pumpkin spice batons. So the copy reads pumpkin spice batons delicate rolled wafers filled with pumpkin spice. So what I love about the branding is that they use the word delicate, and I feel like they could have just said you know, rolled wafers. They could have skipped that word entirely, but the word delicate gives it a sense of elegance, almost like cozy elegance, and while I know that these were not lovingly hand rolled by my grandma, it makes it feel like they were. So love that.
Speaker 1:
One thing I would change about the branding, or enhance it, is that on the front they feature the wafers, so you can see what they look like. And they also have this little mug or glass of what looks like a pumpkin spice latte, which is smart to show that it's going to give you that pumpkin spice flavor. But to elevate this, I would actually put one of the wafers inside of the mug. And the reason why I say this is because I did try dipping this into my morning coffee, because I mean, you should just try dipping a bunch of things in your morning coffee. I guarantee you it'll make your day better. Moving on to the taste ranking, so I'm giving it. This was a big surprise for me because, again, I didn't really know what to expect, but I'm getting it a 9.5 out of 10. I just thought they would be kind of basic but a nice little crunch, and it's really crunchy on the outside, but the inside, whatever flavoring they have packed in there, is so good. Highly recommend it, okay.
Speaker 1:
Moving on to number three, we're going with the Petite Pumpkin Spice Cookies. Okay, the product description reads Petite Pumpkin Spice Cookies, shortbread Cookies with Pumpkin Spice and Yogurt Coating. What I love about the branding so the package itself has all of these illustrations of fall leaves and what I love most about it is that they cut out two pumpkins in the cardboard so that you could see the inside of the cookies, which are wrapped in plastic for sanitary purposes. It's really cool because you can see what the cookies look like, and anytime you can give your customer like a clear visual, the better. So I think this was a really creative way to play with the packaging in subtle ways.
Speaker 1:
Another thing that I love is that the side copy so it goes into a little bit more detail about the package. It says that flavors are finished with a festive dotting of contrasting sprinkles. I would literally get festive dotting tattooed on my body because that's such a fun phrase to me. Great work to the copy team. Okay, how I would enhance the branding. This is hard because I really don't have any bad things to say about the branding, so this is tough for me. There are some pumpkins that they have illustrated on here and I would throw some sprinkles on them just to indicate that these are sprinkle coated. But really no bad things to say. I love it. Okay, moving on to the taste, I'm going to go with a taste 8 out of 10. I really love the crunch and it's almost got like a gingery pumpkin spice, like a spicy snap to it. I think this also would be great dunked in coffee. So, all this to say, trader Joe's does marketing right. They've turned a boring task of grocery shopping into a whimsical experience. So this is something we all can take note of.
Speaker 1:
As marketers, we should always be thinking of ways to make our customers lives easier and lighter. For instance, like if you run an e-commerce site, figure out ways to insert really cool copy in unexpected places. I talk about this in my first episode, but maybe you can pop in funny copy at the end of the online checkout. If you're a digital CPG site, or if you are a brand like, let's say, it's Oreos or something that's been around for a really long time, think about ways you can change up the copy on the front of your box, or ways you can think about packaging a little bit differently Anything that can get your customer talking and give them an unexpected surprise. I think that always lands well. Okay, that is all for my Trader Joe's content. But in honor of Trader Joe's, we are so lucky to introduce today's fake sponsor, adultable. Think of it like an elevated Lunchable. You get custom snack boxes with protein packed items for busy PR professionals. There are gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan and sweet tooth options to choose from. Happy eating, have a good one. Bye.