Nutella Biscuits or Biscocrema. In other words, cookies and hazelnut cream merge into a crunchy mix
Nutella Biscuits or Biscocrema: a battle fought among huge marketing efforts and empty shelves by two food giants: Ferrero and Barilla. Some even spoke of “scarcity marketing,” to justify depleted stocks in supermarkets and create even greater expectation for consumers.
Introduction
It was November 2019, when Ferrero announced the release of a new delicacy based on their hazelnut cream product: Nutella Biscuits. Thanks to the new production plant in Southern Italy, and after a short test on foreign markets, Ferrero launched its new delicious wheat cookies filled with Nutella.
Packaging and positioning: Nutella Biscuits
The packaging of Nutella Biscuits is self-explanatory. It is a bag of cookies having a breakfast / snack target, with basic design. It features real photography of the product and the typographic characters of the Nutella progenitor.
Still, one element struck us in particular: the closure. Unlike the classic open and close stickers of traditional biscuits, there is an airtight plastic closure similar to that of fridge bags. It is indeed very important to preserve cookies from the air, so that they do not lose fragrance and crunchiness.
Some packaging variants are for instance the individual packs or the famous tube tweeted by Renzi. The latter was allegedly unavailable in Italy, but this turned out to be false.
Competitive differentiation
We have read comments like: “just take any biscuit and spread Nutella on it” or “we had Baiocchi that were fine all the same”. As a matter of fact, we don’t quite agree and we will explain the reason why. The hazelnut cream goes inside the shortbread and it is safely sealed in there. Hence the final result is releasing a bundle of flavors, only AFTER having soaked the biscuit in milk, coffee or other drink and having dented the crispy wrapping. So we are paying gold for a food engineering solution that is difficult to reproduce. As it turns out, the cookies have hit the sales record.
Biscocrema: Barilla’s answer
Although Biscocrema have been at the starting blocks for some time, the launch followed the stellar results by the competition.
Packaging and positioning: Biscocrema
The Biscocrema filled with Pan di Stelle cream were not long in coming. Two factors immediately catch the eye: the packaging in a small snack format and the attention to healthiness.
All the ingredients indeed give up on saturated fats and are fair and supportive. As it turns out there is sunflower oil, which will become 100% sustainable by 2020, instead of palm oil. The same goes for soft wheat flour. In addition, the hazelnuts for the cream are 100% Italian (unlike the mostly Turkish Ferrero ones). Also, Cocoa grows in the Ivory Coast a country where Barilla finances projects for the development of local economies.
Furthermore, the shape and looks of the cookie are more elegant than the competitor. This required the use of even more sophisticated technological solutions. To the test of taste, cocoa is predominant with way less sweet tones. The outcome is anyways no less enjoyable.
Conclusions
Who will win this fierce competition? The answer lies in the taste of consumers. Still, we wanted to emphasize that packaging and positioning are key to the success of any product.
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