Old El Paso Case Summary

What: Kurt, the associate marketing manager of Old El Paso, needs to develop a new marketing plan to increase its brand awareness and educate the public about the convenience of preparing Mexican meals.
Why: Old El Paso has been the market leader in the Mexican food industry for many years. Now, General Mills wants Old El Paso to increase its sales by 5% while maintaining the same level of profitability. However, Mexican food industry is growing at a relatively slow growth rate of 3% per year, because Mexican food is not always on customers shopping list as there is a strong perception that Mexican food is inconvenient and difficult to prepare. That is why Kurt needs to develop a new marketing plan to raise brand awareness and educate the public in order to achieve the 5% goal.
Old El Paso has been positioning itself as a “Family Fun Experience” product. Meanwhile, the customers are more concerned about the process of preparing Mexican food, ie., while many factors, including time needed for preparation and simplicity of preparation contributed to consumer perception of convenience/ease of preparation, ingredient availability was found to be the most significant barrier to making Mexican meals more often. They also need to educate their customers about the benefits of cooking Mexican food. For example, according to their consumer research, 70% of decisions to purchase Mexican meal products are made before consumers ever arrive at the grocery store. Apply the fact to the AIDA model, it is important to raise its brand awareness and get consumers interested in its products in order to increase sales, because most of the purchase decisions are made before the customers see the actual product. With the fact that Old El Paso is the market leader and its brand equity, as soon as the brand awareness and interest is established, the sales will