Brand Communication Strategy Analysis – Marely Spoon; Home Delivered Meal Kits
Marley Spoon (MS) is a brand at the forefront of the burgeoning home delivered meal kit
market. Though still in its infancy the market is seen as fast growing (McIlvaine, 2018), with
significant potential (de Sena, 2018).
In 2016 the market for meal kit delivery services was believed to have generated
approximately $94 million in consumer spending (Potter, 2017). In the eight months prior to
May 2018, Australian households purchased approximately 150,000 meal kits from the two
main market providers, Hello Fresh (HF) and MS (De Sena, 2018).
With its range of do it yourself, healthy and fresh meal kits, MS has tapped into the increasing
Australian health consciousness, which has been rising in Australia for the better part of the
last decade and is expected to continue doing so (Lucio, 2018). This coincides with the global
trend against waste, with people no longer wishing to over purchase food products (Evans,
2019). Consumers are also weary of excessive product packaging, posing a challenge for meal
kit providers who require significant packaging to maintain freshness and quality. Levels of
packaging have been cited by consumers in the past as a reason for unsubscribing from meal
kit services (Clemons, 2018).
Marketers have capitalised on consumer desire for convenience, quality, freshness and waste
minimisation through communication. Though an untapped prospect for communication is
the positive opportunity cost that consumer’s gain from engaging meal kit services. Previously
consumers have had to think, plan and execute their weekly meals. Now all they need do is
click a button. What potential opportunities might consumers now be able to pursue that
they were unable to previously.
Other players have also capitalised on the market’s growth. In May of 2018, HF claimed record
high growth, with annual revenue on track to exceed $200 million and deliveries surpassing
500,000 meals a week (Koehn, 2018). HF has also grown a significant presence on social media
channels (refer to Appendix 1 – Competitor Digital Analysis).
The home delivered meal kit market is also facing stiff competition from meal delivery
services such as Uber Eats. The proliferation of tech-driven online middle men that provide
meals from a range of local restaurants is a reason some investors have steered clear of home
delivered meal kits (Evans, 2019). As one prominent commentator put it “Why are you going
to spend $12 for the ingredients when you can go a step further and have quality meal
delivered straight to you for $12?” (Evans, 2019). These companies also employ well-polished
user applications. Uber Eats, for example, is the no. 1 food and drink application on the
Australian Apple App-Store.
There are a range of competitors providing similar services and geographical positioning to
MS including HF, Dinnerly, Pepper Leaf and other smaller providers (Clemons, 2018). In
addition to these brands there is also providers of fully prepared meals delivered to your door,
including; YouFoodz, Gourmet Dinner Service and Lite and Easy. The business model is similar
to meal kit providers, with ordering conducted through websites and apps, with fully prepared
meals arriving at your door. Youfoodz is also readily accessible compared to all other
competitors, as its business model includes distribution through supermarkets (Burrell, 2018).
Food delivery services are opening up a whole new experience for time poor professionals
and families. Meal kit customers are high spend consumers, 77% likely to be of high affluence
and have a 64% probability of being aged 45 years or younger (de Sena, 2018). Home deliver
meal kit customers have a willingness and means to spend for convenience and healthiness,
and will remain loyal to a brand (de Sena, 2018).
The average MS customer spends approximately $200-$240 per month (Hogan, 2018), with
80% of subscribers being women (Evans, 2018). According to a 2018 MS prospectus, about
80% of consumers are in a relationship, with approximately 40% living in households with one
or more children and almost exclusively living in urban or inner city suburban areas (Marley
Spoon, 2018). Their top preferences for using MS are for variety in weeknight cooking,
convenience and time saving (Marley Spoon, 2018).
Based on the available target market data and marketing communications MS has two key
customer persona’s that they are targeting; Successful Susan and Variety Vicky. Successful
Susan is a full-time professional in a highly educated field i.e. law, medicine or finance. She is
in her late 20s to early 30s and has difficulty maintaining work-life balance. She lives with her
partner in an urban area and spends a significant time commuting weekly. She’s socially
conscious and cares about the environment. She wants to lead a healthy and enjoyable
lifestyle. She eats out on the weekend and wants to eat healthy during the week to
supplement this. She wants fresh products, and to maintain the independence and fulfilment
of self-preparing meals. She doesn’t have the energy to decide what to eat at the end of the
week and wants to enjoy her free time.
Variety Vicky has one or two children of young primary school age. She’s married and lives in
an affluent suburb or area. She’s educated and went to university. She’s in her late 30s to
early 40s. She wants to cook for her family, but doesn’t know how to be creative. She cares
about what she feeds her family and likes meal kits but doesn’t want to use the same as
everyone else.
MS states that it seeks to maintain an established customer value proposition through choice,
variety, health, convenience, time savings, flexibility, family time and food waste reduction
(Marley Spoon, 2018).
MS’ positioning strategy within the market is focussed around their consumer’s preferences
and the brand value proposition (please see below Figure 1 and Figure 2).
Figure 2: Positioning Map; Convenience vs Price
Figure 1: Positioning Map; Choice & Variety vs Price
MS has positioned itself in the moderate to high price bracket. With regards to convenience
MS offers to the door delivery through a range of times, with orders able to be placed through
its website or application service. MS recently confirmed a new logistical arrangement with a
national provider, enabling them to add new delivery windows and increase services to
existing markets (McIlvaine, 2018). MS offers similar meal preparation times to the rest of the
market though is not able to compete with the convenience of ready to eat meals. MS claims
to have the largest offering of meals of any national meal-kit provider and currently offers 20
different recipes each week (McIlvaine, 2018) and has signalled plans to introduce more
personalised recipes in the future (Hogan, 2018).
MS’ positioning within consumer perceptions of price, convenience, choice and variety
appears to be on par with HF. They have comparable consumer ratings on au.trustpilot.com
(2019) and productreview.com.au (2019), when sample size is taken into account. Consumers
have positively remarked on MS’s convenience and variety reinforcing the brand’s
positioning. Consumers provided similar feedback to HF, noting the products price,
convenience and freshness (productreview.com.au, 2019).
MS appears to be lagging behind with regards to convenience once application reviews are
taken into account (refer to Appendix 1). The HF application has significantly greater market
prominence and salience (refer to Appendix 1).
Youfoodz is also becoming a leader within the home delivery market. Youfoodz appears to
have a unique value proposition that consumers are responding to based on price,
convenience and taste. On productreview.com.au (2019) Youfoodz has a review rating
significantly higher than either MS or HF, with customer reviews citing the products
convenience and taste.
The brand communications strategy of MS utilises a combination of;
– advertising through online display ads, social media advertisement, traditional print
media, TV advertising, outdoor advertising and other channels (Marley Spoon, 2018);
– sales promotions through discounted purchases for new and returning customers; and
– direct marketing primarily through email campaigns and content.
The aim of these strategies is to inform the target market about the brand’s value proposition
and perceived benefits, and persuade the target audience to trial the service.
MS has established some brand salience within the market as a provider of convenient and
affordable meals, providing variety and saving time. The brand is having some issues
maintaining its position and differentiating itself within the market. For example, Dinnerly
website traffic increased significantly in January 2019, outstripping MS (refer to Appendix 1).
Competitors such as HF and Youfoodz have also established greater presence on social media
(refer to Appendix 1).
The MS brand communication strategy seeks to position the brand as reliable, affordable and
convenient, whilst providing a sense of style and design. MS regularly and consistently
displays its product as prepared meals in a stylistic manner (refer to Appendix 1).
MS performance benefits are extended through its use of purchase and usage situation
imagery, as well as user and personality imagery. MS consistently shows imagery of fresh,
quality meals throughout its platforms. MS also displays content that shows families
interacting through the products, displaying wholesome images of mothers and children
creating meals, and children consuming products and interacting with the packaging. The use
of packaging as a benefit is clever as the level of packaging has been noted as a deterrent for
consumers (Clemons, 2018). This is great content for Variety Vicky, but may not be leveraged
to full effect and may have no impact on Successful Stacy.
An analysis of MS’ social media strategy (refer to figure 3) demonstrates an opportunity for
MS to further establish its performance and imagery is through promoting empathetic video
content. MS competitors are also saturating their communication channels with similar
imagery (refer to Appendix 1). MS has an opportunity to promote the unknown benefits of
what may come through removing the stress of weekly meal preparations. Successful Susan
may have more time to spend with her partner and reconnect or catch up on reports. Variety
Vicky may engage in cooking with her family, creating priceless memories or even have time
to have a quiet glass of wine.
Figure 3: Marley Spoon Social Media SWOT Analysis
MS attempts to effect consumer judgements of the brands quality and credibility through
consistently promoting images of stylistically prepared meals. It also actively engages on
social media with consumer mentions, particularly twitter, and engages with negative
feedback on review sites such (productreview.com.au, 2019).
Through its brand communication strategy MS is eliciting emotions of warmth, social approval
and self-respect. The brand engages the consumer’s feelings of affection and sentimentality
through content that promotes connection with food. Though, as stated earlier, this is
something that the brand could do with more effect, particularly to Variety Vicky.
The brand also attempts to leverage feelings of social approval and self-respect through
promoting content that allows convenience to the consumer whilst meeting society’s
approval of an acceptable diet and self-respect through self-preparing meals and providing a
variety of foods and nutritional requirements for one’s self and loved ones. This is particularly
of note for Successful Susan and could be utilised to greater affect.
MS appears to have established behavioural loyalty exemplified through revenue growth
(Evans, 2019) and approximate expenditure of the average consumer of above $200 per
month. MS may also be on its way to establishing long term attachment to its brand as
customer advocacy and referrals account for about a third of new customers (Marley Spoon,
2018). Though this is not a unique trend for MS, as HF and Dinnerly both enjoy direct traffic
rates to their sites of 51.97% and 37.40% respectively (refer to Appendix 1), suggesting that
the audience is receiving links to the site from some source.
Appendix 1.
| Website | Website Analytics (similarweb.com) | |
| Marley Spoon | – www.marleyspoon.com.au – Stylistic, soft and cool colours, with images of fresh produce and meals – Promotes Value Proposition; Variety, Convenience and Freshness / Healthiness – Seeking to inform, persuade and convert – Prompts to subscribe to service and newsletter |
– 213K average monthly visits for the last 6 months to January (Peak 260K January 2019) – 4,424th most visited Australian site – 2:23 (min:sec) average visit duration – 4.33 pages per visit – 65.86% bounce rate – Top traffic sources; 41.12% direct, 33.09% search (61.82% organic & 38.18% paid), 16.26% display ads and 2.7% from social media (72.37% Facebook) – Audience also visiting competitor sites; Hello Fresh, Youfoodz & Dinnerly |
| Hello Fresh | – hellofresh.com.au – Stylistic, vibrant colours and pictures of fresh produce and meals – Incentive to subscribe to service discounted introductory rate – Seeking to inform, persuade and convert – Promotes Value Proposition; Variety, Convenience and Taste |
– 443K average monthly visits for the last 6 months to January (Peak 470K January 2019) – 1,511th most visited Australian site – 4:19 (min:sec) average visit duration – 6.10 pages per visit – 39.55% bounce rate – Top traffic sources; 51.97% search (82.18% organic & 17.82% paid), 37.23% direct and 4.09% social media (72.87% Facebook) – Audience also visiting competitor sites; Marley Spoon, Youfoodz & Dinnerly |
| Pepper Leaf | – pepperleaf.com.au – Stylistic, vibrant colours and uses of video banner showing farm to table – Incentive to subscribe to service, using buy one get one free (fruit) – Prompts to sign to newsletter – A lot of content, seeking to inform and persuade – Promoted Value Proposition; Australia owned, Fresh, Healthy and Convenient |
– 301,644th most visited Australian site – Top traffic sources; 60.10% search (100% organic), 38.08% direct and 1.82% referrals |
| Dinnerly | – dinnerly.com.au – Stylistic, basic shots, with cool colours showing fresh produce and meals – Prompts to subscribe to newsletter – Content seeking to inform and persuade – Promotes Value Proposition; Price, Freshness and Convenience |
– 68K average monthly visits for the last 6 months to January (Peak 270K January 2019) – 8,644th most visited Australian site – 54secs average visit duration – 1.82 pages per visit – 67.78% bounce rate – Top traffic sources; 37.40% direct, 23.37% search (50.49& organic & 48.51% paid), 21.98% display ads and 7.33% social media (96.11% Facebook) |
| Youfoodz | – youfoodz.com.au – Vibrant, well presented meals – Content seeking to inform, persuade and convert – Seeking to inform, persuade and convert – Promotes Value Proposition; Price, Convenience and Healthy |
– Not Available |
| Gourmet Dinner Services |
– gourmetservices.com.au – Detail orientated website, a lot of information – Minimal photos – Content seeking to inform, persuade and convert – Promotes Value Proposition; Convenience, Healthy and Quality |
– 114,406th most visited Australian website – Top traffic sources; 78.74% search (97.64% organic & 2.36% Paid), 16% direct and 5.26% referrals |
| Marley Spoon Competitor Digital Analysis |
| Marley Spoon | – Approx. 355,000 likes – Minimal engagement, though largely positive – Post likes range between 5-50 – Content predominately photos of meals, with some sales promotional content |
– Approx. 400 followers – Following approx. 350 – Minimal to no tweet engagement – Content similar to Facebook predominately photos of meals – Predominately used to interact with regards to customer service, complaints and promoting positive feedback |
– Approx. 18,400 followers – Follows approx. 300 – Post likes range from 50-500 – Post comments range from 10-150, predominantly positive – Promotes stylistic shots of prepared meals – Most popular comment is videos displaying value proposition; convenience, healthiness and freshness – Appears to use social media influencers, women between the ages of 30-40, that do not promote discount codes |
| Hello Fresh | – Approx. 1,800,000 likes – Minimal engagement, though largely positive or service orientated – Post likes range from 40-200 – Content generally consists of images of meals with some sales promotion content – Most popular content is video tutorials |
– Approx. 2450 followers – Following approx. 650 – Minimal to no tweet engagement – Content similar to Facebook, e.g. photos of meals but also promotes Value Proposition in the text of posts; Variety, Convenience and Taste – Predominately used to interact with regards to customer service, complaints and promoting positive feedback |
– Approx. 86,000 followers – Follows approx. 400 – Post likes range from 50-5000 – Post comments generally range from 5-30 – Promotes stylistic images of prepared meals – Most popular content is short videos, recipe instructions, that promote value proposition; variety, convenience and taste – Uses social media influencers, young fit and healthy women aged 20-30, that promote discount codes |
| Pepper Leaf | – Approx. 2,000 likes – Minimal to no engagement – Content generally consist of images of meals |
– Approx. 150 followers – Follows approx. 50 – Tweet engagement rare – Similar content to competitors using photos of meals |
– Approx. 3,400 followers – Following approx. 1,900 – Post likes generally range from 50-100 – Post comments generally range from 0-10 – Content is predominately stylistic images of prepared meals – No videos |
| Dinnerly | – Approx. 6,800 likes – Minimal post engagement – Content predominately photos of meals, with discount incentives to subscribe |
– Approx. 3 followers – Follows approx. 50 – Minimal tweets, 3 total (last post April 2018) – Minimal market engagement – Predominately used to interact with regards to customer service, complaints and promoting positive feedback |
– Approx. 1,300 followers – Following approx. 500 – Post likes generally range from 10-50 – Post comments generally range from 0-40 – Content is predominately stylistic images of prepared meals – No videos – Most popular content is competition engagement |
| Youfoodz | – Approx. 218,000 likes – Much higher engagement than competitors – Content varies from photos of food espousing taste and convenience, to price promotions, new products and competitions – Most popular content is their content that actively seeks to engage, competitions and open questions e.g. which are you? – Consumer engagement is significantly positive |
– Approx. 850 followers – Follows approx. 300 – Tweets frequently with minimal engagement – Customers tagging Youfoodz in tweets regular with almost exclusively positive comments – Predominately used to interact with regards to customer service, complaints and promoting positive feedback – Promotes Value Proposition; Price, Convenience and Healthy |
– Approx. 118,000 followers – Follows approx. 1,500 – Post likes generally range from 100 to 5,000 – Post comment generally range from 10-100, predominately positive – Most popular content is videos promoting competition engagement or short videos of prepared products, specifically focussing on freshness – Utilise social media influencers promoting fun, convenience and health, as well as promotional discounts |
| Gourmet Dinner Services |
– Approximately 3,600 likes – Has ordered there page to place reviews of the company at the top of the page, which are predominately positive – Seeks to align content to holidays or the season e.g. Christmas, New Years, Australia Day, long weekends, summer – Content has a focus on their meals |
– Does not operate on twitter – There is still minimal engagement from customers with the brand, predominately positive |
– Approx. 1,000 followers – Following approx. 1,500 – Minimal post engagement – Content almost exclusively stylistic images of prepared meals – Appear to have recently engaged social media influencers, young mothers, promoting convenience and healthiness |
| Marley Spoon Competitor Digital Analysis |
| YouTube | Application (Apple Store) | |||
| Marley Spoon | – Most content focuses on the products value proposition for young families; conveniences, healthiness, freshness and allowing more time to be spent engaging with family – Some content in the last 12 months has received upward of 300,000 views |
– Approx. 2,300 monthly views – Approx. 200 followers – Minimal engagement – Almost exclusively utilising stylised images of prepared meals |
– No Australian specific page |
– Average rating of 3.2 out of 5 (31 reviews) – Ranked no. 39 on the Australian store for food and drink applications for popularity |
| Hello Fresh | – Original content were focussed on recipes and instructions – Recent content has begun featuring well-known Australian celebrities in light-hearted and entertaining videos, with views increasing going past 300,000 views – A lot of paid and unpaid content – Paid content features predominately youthful women and espouses themes of fun |
– Not Applicable | – No Australian specific page |
– Average rating of 4.4 out of 5 (approx. 2,600 reviews) – Ranked no. 10 on the Australian store for food and drink applications |
| Pepper Leaf | – Not Applicable | – Not Applicable | – Approx. 20 followers – Minimal content – No engagement |
– Not Applicable |
| Dinnerly | – No YouTube content – There are a number of product reviews of the brand that appear to be largely unpaid |
– Not Applicable | – Not Applicable | – Average rating of 5 out of 5 (from 5 reviews) – Ranked no. 143 on the Australian store for food and drink applications |
| Youfoodz | – Content frequently viewed 200K to 300K times – Short videos focus on the ease and convenience of the product in a fun and light-hearted manner with predominately young talent – Utilises social media influencers, young women 20-30, to promote convenience and ease of use |
– Approx. 1,700 monthly views – Approx. 300 followers – Minimal content available with minimal engagement |
– Approximately 3,600 followers – Minimal engagement – Content focussing on staff |
– Average rating of 3.6 out of 5 (from 93 reviews) – Ranked no. 28 on the Australian store for food and drink applications |
| Gourmet Dinner Services |
– Not Applicable | – Not Applicable | – Approx. 30 followers – Minimal content – No engagement |
– Not Applicable |
| Marley Spoon Competitor Digital Analysis |
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