From transparent packaging to guerrilla marketing on the streets of Manhattan: the Marketing Director of Garofalo USA talks about the Italian brand’s strategies to consolidate its leadership in the U.S. market and challenge nutritional prejudices.
Garofalo is a historic Italian pasta brand, known all over the world. What is the main objective of your presence at a trade show as important as Fancy Food? Is it more of an opening strategy to new markets or a consolidation of your presence?
The Fancy Food for us remains the most important trade show event here in the United States. We have been attending this event for more than 15 years. To answer your question: yes, it is definitely a market consolidation operation. Garofalo has been present in this country for more than 20 years and we are the best-selling branded spaghetti in the United States. So for us this market is vital and fundamental. The Fancy Food, which is definitely the biggest showcase of food and food trends in the U.S., remains an event we cannot miss.
You operate in different markets and therefore deal with different types of consumers. Garofalo has introduced product and packaging innovations-what do you think are the most interesting innovations you have presented to American buyers?
This year was full of new things for us, and Fancy Food was the perfect showcase to introduce them. I would tell you that, first of all, after almost 20 years we finally revisited our pack, which has been one of the key elements of our success. We were among the first brands to package pasta in a transparent package and to associate the color black with food. However, this choice dates back 20 years. Today we wanted to give a new twist to our historic packaging by prominently inserting the word “Carbohydrates” in red. It may seem trivial, but in recent years, especially in the American market, consumers have been trying to move away from carbohydrate consumption. With the words “Real Italian Carbs,” highlighted in a bold black font and our signature transparency, we want to invite the American consumer to consciously use carbohydrates. We all try to limit carbohydrates in our diet, but when we consume them, we choose the good, high-quality, made in Italy ones. The idea came right from our sales team here in the United States, from people who live here and listen to people tell about their trips to Italy, where they eat pasta and bread without making too many sacrifices and feel good. Then they come back to the United States, do the same thing and feel bloated or weighed down.So our message is: yes to carbohydrates, but the good ones, which really make a difference.
So qualitatively, it is not a carbohydrate that has negative health consequences, but you want to avoid demonizing the word “carbohydrate,” which is what pasta is. Rather, it is about supporting it in the right way.
That’s right. Also on this line, we also launched our High Protein line. What differentiates us from the many High Protein pastas, including Italian ones, already on the market? The fact that our High Protein pasta is completely made of wheat. It is exactly how pasta should be. So it retains the flavor of traditional pasta, but it has a higher protein content thanks to a special processing of wheat germ, which provides a higher protein nutrient than regular pasta.
Absolutely interesting. So these are some of the innovations from the point of view of product offerings and packaging, reflecting the change. But you, as Marketing Director, are also behind the scenes of the whole communication and promotion part. How do you communicate this news and, more importantly, how do you adapt the communication for an American audience?
Packaging remains our main communication tool. It’s on the shelf, it’s impactful, and we want to keep it that way. But this year a really interesting creative idea came to us from our headquarters in Gragnano, from the marketing department led by Anita Menna. In collaboration with Alta Cucina, a communications agency, they came up with a crazy idea for us: to go around for three days in New York with a completely transparent truck, made of glass, inside of which was an Italian family eating an Italian meal, with the words “Imported from Italy” on it. The idea was to make it look like this family had been magically transported here to the United States, roaming the streets of Manhattan. We wanted to make it clear to the American consumer that the product they can buy here, thanks to Pasta Garofalo, is exactly the same as the one we eat in Italy. This transparency, which characterizes us in the pack and the product, is also reflected in the way we communicate it, with a guerrilla marketing action that we carried out during Fancy Food, taking advantage of the days when the whole city lives and celebrates food more than ever.
A perfect strategy to convey the message in a direct way. The American public loves to experience things firsthand and share them, so this initiative is certainly effective.We wish you all the best of luck in continuing your work to expand and consolidate the brand. We are very proud to have you here. Thank you so much, Flavia, for being with us.
Thanks to you, thanks to Garofalo. See you soon!
The article Flavia Garzia (Garofalo USA): “This is how we tell Americans about Italian pasta without fear of carbohydrates” comes from TheNewyorkese.