Haagen-Dazs: Promoting an Adult Ice Cream

Haagen-Dazs: Promoting an Adult Ice Cream

Haagen-Dazs makes the best-selling super premium ice cream in North America. Its luscious ingredients include chocolate from America, vanilla from Madagascar, coffee from Brazil, berries from Oregon, and nuts from Hawaii. The shop served close to million ice cream lovers in its first year. The success of the victor Hugo Plaza shop in Paris, now the company’s second busiest, let to the establishment of its first European factory in France. Haagen-Dazs shops have opened in Italy, Spain, Benelux and Scandinavia, among other countries. The appealing flavors can now be found not only in the company’s shops but also at airports, in cafes and in carefully selected delicatessens, with rapidly growing popularity.

The product’s high quality has been essential in maintaining a loyal customers following, but it was promotional work that led to the successful take-off of what was previously an unheard-of brand in Europe. Sales promotion in the guise of free tasting was a major part of the promotional mix: over 5 million free cupfuls of ice cream were given away during the company’s European launch. Thousands of retailers, cafes and delis were supplied with branded freezers both to display and carefully look after the new premium ice cream. As part of its European launch, Haagen-Dazs spent 30 million pounds on advertising, stressing the deluxe ingredients, unusual flavors and novelty of its product. Europeans currently eat 25% of the 3 billion gallons of ice cream each year consumed worldwide. Haagen-Dazs plans to increase consumption by appealing to more than traditional ice cream-loving children.

The summer afternoon stroll with an ice cream cornet, the family trip to a fun park or beach, a snack during a film or concert, the climax of a birthday party feast had long been the core market for Wall’s and Nestle. Ice Cream Mars changed all that by creating an ice cream bar suitable for any occasion and particularly attractive to adults. Haagen-Dazs went further. Award-winning press adverts, artistically shot, often in black and white, featured lithe, semi-nude couples entwined in exotic poses while feeding each other Haagen-Dazs ice cream. The appeal of vanilla ice cream bars hand-dipped in Belgian chocolate and rolled in roasted almonds now seems hard to resist for adults everywhere. The advertising imagery promotes an adult, up-market, glamorous positioning for this super premium ice cream