For more than 30 years, IGA’s Red Oval Family has brought together a wide range of manufacturers and service providers with products and services that help IGA independent retailers and the IGA brand grow and thrive. Today we are thrilled to announce that Kellogg's has joined the IGA family as a Red Oval Partner, bringing a myriad of popular products and valuable category insights.
"Kellogg, like so many premier brands and service providers, is joining with IGA in strategic relationship we call Red Oval partner," IGA CEO John Ross says. "Without interfering with trade promotions, wholesaler, or local deals, this new relationship allows the brand to harness national shopper, digital, and marketing insights to connect with independent retailers in a modern, data-driven way."
IGA spoke to Kellogg's Vice President of Sales, Wholesale Channel Mike Browne to learn more about their product innovations, why they're excited to work with IGA retailers, and how they're helping stores and shoppers during COVID-19.
Kellogg has invested heavily in occasion-based research. This has shaped, in many ways, where we innovate and place big bets. For instance, Pop-Tarts Bites are focused heavily on away-from-home consumption, while the base Pop-Tarts are more often consumed at home. As a result, we are starting to see even larger consumption incrementality, which helps build success for all of us.
At Kellogg, we understand the incredible value of the independent channel to get our brands out to the shopper. When independents partner with us to bring our brands and solutions to their shoppers, we're able to touch more families across more zip codes in the U.S. We couldn't be happier about this opportunity to develop a lasting relationship with IGA and its retailers.
We want to work with IGA to deliver better and faster insights about category, brand, and consumer trends, as well as tangible solutions—like best practices in marketing and merchandising and shopper deals through the National Digital Ad. It's a win for both of us. The retailer reward is better assortment and presentation and increased sales. For us, one of the biggest rewards is having a better understanding of what shoppers and the stores of the independent channel are looking for from our brands.
This has been such a difficult time for so many. The independent grocers have done better than rest of market, and looking at the data, one could say this may be due to the trust communities have in independents. Trust in keeping them safe and serving the community during this time.
It is important right now to keep things very simple. Stocking and promoting the core products first. Making sure that products that are overindexing on SNAP and are WIC-eligible are all added to the shelf. And I would continue to look for ways for shoppers to see first hand that store employees and shoppers alike are being taken care of in the store. We are all in this together.
Have questions about Kellogg's and their products? Contact Kellogg's Vice President of Sales, Wholesale Channel Mike Browne at michael.browne@kellogg.com.