Cholula: Where to go? Rebecca Jing Liu Whats Cholula? Current - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Cholula: Where to go?

Rebecca Jing Liu

What’s Cholula?

• Current positioning: The Flavorful Fire
• Mid-level hotness, all about enhancing food flavors

without overpowering them

• Imported from Mexico

Problem Statement

• How to convince consumers that the authentic

Mexican hot sauce is better than those wannabes in the current U.S market?

Secondary Research

Category Trend

• Hot sauces’ performance has been steady, presenting
• pportunity for future growth
• The expanding Hispanic population in U.S fuels a

growing interest in Mexican food

Secondary Research

Competitive Landscape

• Cluttered markets
• Direct competitors (with Mexican claim or

communication elements): Tabasco, Tapatio

• Indirect competitors (category leader): Frank’s, Texas

Pete, Huy Fong Sriracha

Secondary Research

Competitive Landscape

Consumer Research

Methodologies

• Secondary research on consumer behavior
• Grocery store observation
• Focus group
• One-on-one blind taste test (26 participants)
• Online survey specifically for Latinos (60 respondents)

Consumer Research

Key Findings

• People who are most likely to be heavy users of hot

sauces are those who aren’t good at or particularly interested in cooking, but only use hot sauce to give their food a final kick on flavors.

• Although more than half of the respondents claim they

have a go-to brand for hot sauces, such loyalty may not be a real flavor attachment. Instead, it could be just force of habit or top-of-mind awareness. Therefore, most of them are open to new brands.

Consumer Research

Key Findings

• Consumers do believe that flavors are more important

than the level of hotness.

• Cholula’s “Mexican-ness” is well-reputed and

recognized by Latinos participated in the research.

Positioning

• Cholula is the only authentic Mexican hot sauce

available in US market.

• Competitive advantages: legitimac

egitimacy and av availability ailability

Creative Brief

• Who

Who’s our tar s our target get? ?

• Thomas, a senior college student who loves Mexican
• food. He rarely cooks due to his busy school/work

schedules and when he cooks, he throws everything he has in the fridge in the pot and wait till it boils. He does love hot sauces – that’s how he guarantee flavors for his

• dishes. He’s not really loyal to any brand but normally he

would just throw a bottle of Tabasco into the basket because a lot of other people around him use that. He doesn’t pay too much attention about the different brands in the store.

Creative Brief

• What do they curr

What do they curren entl tly think? y think?

• Cholula what? Don’t all the hot sauces taste the same?
• What

What woul

• uld

d we e wan ant them to think? t them to think?

• Cholula is the hot sauce that makes your food Mexican.
• Our singl

Our single mos e most compelling pr t compelling promise?

• mise?
• Cholula has the ability to transform any food on your

plate into a true Mexican cuisine.

Creative Brief

• Ho

How do w do we mak e make it believ e it believabl able? e?

• Cholula is created from an old Mexican recipe that

features handpicked ingredients from Mexico – it’s authentically Mexican.

• Consumer research shows that Latinos rated Cholula

really high compared with any other hot sauces on the scale of being authentically Mexican.