There are many ways to measure a retail brand’s health, from customer acquisition to foot traffic to the inventory turnover ratio. But here’s one underappreciated indicator: Can your brand take a joke?
That’s the test that a certain purveyor of fruit arrangements faced recently, when one of the most popular shows on Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher, made it a punch line.
In episode 3 of its inaugural season, Camille L’Espanaye (Kate Siegel) confuses an assistant when she orders him to send an Edible Arrangement to an adversary.
“Toby, damn it,” Camille says. “Everybody knows that Edible Arrangements are what you send to people you hate.”
So the company sent Siegal an arrangement.
“Hey Kate!...just wanted to say no hard feelings ;)” the note began. “Sending this to you because we love you.”
Siegal posted the note on Instagram, commenting, “Low-key brilliant @ediblearrangements.”
“People are not familiar with us like the previous generation was,” Kevin Keith, CMO of Edible Brands, told Retail Brew. “They think it’s like an old person’s kind of a gift from your grandma.”
There’s a way to be in on the joke rather than just the brunt of it, he continued.
“Brands that have a quirky and sometimes kind of a little bit of [a] punch line to them, I say, ‘Lean in on that; go with the grain as opposed to trying to fight it,’” Keith said. “But while you’re going with the grain you’re also resetting, you’re kind of surreptitiously changing people’s perceptions by leaning in on that joke.”
Changing perceptions, it turns out, is what the 24-year-old company is all about these days. As part of a brand refresh, it’s rolling out an offbeat advertising campaign, and adding non-fruit options, many at lower prices, to appeal to younger consumers.
But what might be most dramatic of all is that, like an SUV unhitching itself from an Airstream, the brand is pulling away from its tail end.
It has become simply Edible.
By any other name: One reason for the change is accuracy since many of the company’s newer gift offerings aren’t arranged in baskets. Among the products it has launched since 2019 are baked goods including cupcakes, cookies, brownies, and cheesecakes; coffee and tea; and chocolate.
Also, “arrangements is a mouthful,” Keith explained. “Streamlining that vocabulary for consumers is helpful.”
New TV spots for Edible that began rolling out in October, meanwhile, feature people ordering gifts on atypical occasions (rather than big holidays or milestones). The spots also highlight the increasingly broad gift assortment and that, as of October, in most of the US the products can be delivered in an hour or less.
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In one spot, a woman shows up for a date with someone who, in his dating profile picture, wears a suit and tie, has short brown hair, and says he’s 27. But he shows up looking more like a middle-aged troll doll, with long frizzy gray hair, an unfortunate goatee (is there any other kind?), and a Hawaiian shirt and takes a sip from a to-go coffee cup before offering it to her.
“Feel like you’ve been catfished?” intones a voiceover, then delivers the campaign tagline. “There’s an Edible for that.” She orders herself a box of chocolate-covered strawberries and flowers that arrive while she’s still on the date.
Frequency asked questions: The spots are funny, but the strategy driving them is no joke.
Rather than promoting big milestones associated with gifting, like birthdays and holidays, they depict idiosyncratic and prosaic occasions, and consumers purchasing the goodies for themselves, rather than as a gift.
The company’s customers place orders an average of 1.38 times annually, and the campaign reflects Edible’s strategy to increase that frequency by highlighting “more casual moments,” Keith said.
The campaign also is part of a broader “next-gen” marketing strategy by Edible, Somia Farid Silber, the company’s president, told Retail Brew.
“With the introduction of the new categories, we’ve introduced new price points,” Silber said. “You can get something from Edible and spend $30 or $40 and…draw on that next generation of consumers that may not have the ability to spend $75-plus on a gift.”
Edibles arrangements? One wrinkle about renaming itself Edible is that, as legal cannabis retail stores are growing (like weeds!) across the country, consumers may increasingly associate the term “edible” with food items that contain cannabis.
You might expect the brand to take umbrage with the association, but far from it, as regulations around cannabis grow more relaxed, Silber said while there are no definite plans, there’s a possible future where Edible may sell…edibles.
Cannabis edibles are “something that we do look at and think about,” Silber said. “It is on our radar as something that might turn into an offering here one day.”