Miracle Whip Is the New Black!

“We are Miracle Whip. And we will not tone it down” is the defiant tagline for a new ad campaign for Miracle Whip, which was once known as simply “the Kraft bread spread.” The new Gen-Y focused TV ad first caught my eye a couple weeks ago. While I haven’t rushed out and bought a jar (or a one-gallon vat, which is apparently one of the options), if my Gen-Y daughters request it, we may give it a try.

I found the really cool ad, which you can see here (http://tiny.cc/sAC1w) quite remarkable. For one, it took me back to childhood: ours was a mayonnaise family, and one of my best friends lived in a Miracle Whip household. I should mention that I was somewhat more aware of this kind of stuff than most kids, because my dad worked for General Mills. Though “Big G,” as we called it, was not in the sandwich spread business, (Kraft makes Miracle Whip and appears to be the leader in mayo) I was probably more aware of food and foodlike substances than most kids my age, because where there were choices, we were pretty much limited to General Mills products. Because breakfast cereals were hugely important to Big G and a significant part of my diet, I was keenly aware of foods I ate at friends’ houses that were unavailable at home. So for some reason, the allure of Miracle Whip, which I only experienced elsewhere, was conflated with the frankly superior hedonics of cereals like Cap’n Crunch and Super Sugar Crisp. So all of that is to say that I’ve always been aware that Miracle Whip and mayonnaise are two different things.

The other reason I found the ad remarkable can be summed up with the word “Huh?” I suppose it’s possible that the flavor of Miracle Whip – with is “zing” (more on that word later) and sort of assertive, weird sweet-but-tangy quality – could appeal to the Gen-Y taste buds, which are known to favor extreme (XTreme) flavors. I’ve long suspected that Miracle Whip was invented when someone at Kraft was testing the shelf life of mayonnaise and discovered that just before it’s foul enough to actually sicken someone, mayo takes on a pleasing-to-some tanginess. The food scientist involved no doubt reported this to the product management and marketing people, who rather than thinking of the words “food safety” thought of the words “line extension” or “new product opportunity.”

“It’s a Miracle,” said the product manager.

“I’ll Whip up a deck,” responded the marketer, “and start socializing it with leadership.” And a product was born.

Given the resources that Kraft has, why wouldn’t they just develop a new condiment? In a world where “Baconnaise” becomes news, wouldn’t it make more sense to get something new out there, to try to really create some buzz? I’m sure Kraft looked into this, and perhaps concluded that they were better off spending their money on marketing. And really, given all that’s going on “in the social networking space,” why not skip the headache of product development and just change the way they talk about the product? So in addition to the hip TV ads, they’ve also developed “Zingr.” (Apparently Gen-Y consumers don’t like spelling the whole word if they can avoid it. LOL.) Zingr is “the newest way to add your own flavor to the web. Zing anything you deem worthy of your wit.” You can download Zingr and use it on Facebook to “zing” your friends by adding your own witty remarks, validated by Miracle Whip’s ever-so-right now graphic motif. So we must conclude that Kraft’s research showed that Gen-Y consumers are most interested in products that somehow create synergy between social networking and sandwiches. I can only imagine the marketers at Heinz and French’s scrambling to counteract Zingr: “I know, how about ‘Splat?’” It’d be awesome to splat someone when they write on your wall…we could totally make it look like yellow graffiti…”

In an interview with Media Post, a Kraft spokesperson said, “Many people enjoyed Miracle Whip in the past, but with so many flavor options today, many of them -- especially younger consumers -- have lost sight of this tangy original dressing.” So they’ve ended up in Shredded Wheat territory, which has a campaign going now that boldly states “Progress is overrated” and “We put the no in innovation.” (The Shredded Wheat campaign has a fun series of episodic ads available for viewing at http://thepalaceoflight.com/.) Fair enough – a TV ad that looks like MTV combined with a social networking add-on might do the trick.

But the Kraft spokesperson goes on to say, “We have reinvented Miracle Whip, and we want to bring its one-of-a-kind flavor back in front of younger consumers who might not be thinking about it." Hmmm. Two things:

• You are wrong on the first point. You have not reinvented it. The whole point is that you haven’t changed it. (“And we will not tone it down.”)
• You are correct on the second point. Younger consumers are not thinking about Miracle Whip

Zing!

Disclaimers and clarifications:

• Some of you have noticed that I recently became a fan of Miracle Whip. This is Facebook fandom ONLY, and is for research purposes only. I am a mayo man, though for sandwich-based applications, especially if roast beef is involved, I’ll go with mayo on one slice and horseradish on the other. That’s some real zing.
• For the record, mayonnaise predates Miracle Whip by about 180 years. Mayo was invented in France in 1756, but didn’t debut in the US till 1905. Miracle Whip came along in 1933.
• Miracle Whip tastes the way it does because it has a whole lot of sugars in it as well as what I’m sure is a secret blend of spices.