Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

136 BRAND RELEVANCE
Oreo Thin Crisps, for example, a cracker - like product with the
taste of Oreo cookies, was one of the fi rst. There was signifi cant
initial success, and the innovation created a position in a new
subcategory. However, with few entry barriers other competitors
were able to leverage their own brands into the 100 - calorie -
serving concept, and people even learned to prepare their
own packs.
Dreyer ’ s Slow Churned Ice Cream
William Dreyer, an ice cream maker, and Joseph Edy, a confectioner,
opened the Grand ice cream shop on Grand Avenue in
Oakland in 1928. That was the beginning of Dreyer ’ s Grand Ice
Cream. The legacy of its innovation in fl avors began the next
year when they invented Rocky Road. Dreyer ’ s expanded to the
East Coast in the early 1980s and took on the name Edy ’ s for
that market to avoid confusion with Breyer ’ s, a major Unilever
ice cream brand that was established on the East Coast. In 2002
Nestl é invested in Dreyer ’ s, and four years later became the full
owner of the business.
In 1987 Dreyer ’ s, responding to the concern about fat, pioneered
the light ice cream subcategory by introducing a low -
fat ice cream. Although light ice cream gained a substantial
part of the market, its taste and texture was decidedly inferior
to full - fl avor ice cream and it, like SnackWell ’ s, hit a wall and
fell back. The unmet need was clearly for a product that would
deliver a low - fat benefi t without sacrifi cing taste.
After fi ve years of research, Dreyer ’ s discovered the answer
in the form of a new technology, low - temperature extrusion. In
traditional ice cream production, the product needs to be frozen
after it is done churning, a process that results in large ice crystals
unless milk fat is added. With this new process, the freezing
isn ’ t necessary so neither is the added milk fat. The result is a
product that has half the fat of regular ice cream and two - thirds
of the calories. And in blind taste tests, eight of ten respondents