Kraft Heinz’s Maxwell House brand is introducing its first innovation in nearly a decade. Maxwell House Iced Latte with Foam claim to be the first-ever foaming agent brought to grocery shelves. The last major innovation from Maxwell House was Iced Coffee Concentrates in 2015. Next year, Maxwell House will also be rolling out its first rebrand in nearly 10 years as it looks to reach a younger category of coffee drinkers.
While 31% of coffee shop beverages are served cold, only 7% of coffee consumed at home is iced due to difficulty in recreating a café-style iced latte. Maxwell House is set to deliver on this niche with an option that makes it easier for everyone to make a café-style iced latte at home.
“As iced beverages continue to rise in coffee shops, this opens a huge opportunity to continue the growth of cold in the coffee aisle at grocery stores,” Sweta Kannan, Kraft Heinz’s director of marketing and coffee innovation, said in a statement. “Our never-before-seen cold-stirred foam technology will allow coffee lovers to save the time and money of going to a coffee shop.”
As marketers strive to make their brands stand out in an ever-crowded marketplace, mental availability emerges as a crucial factor for long-term success. Maxwell House’s enduring brand legacy over the decades serves as a testament to the importance of residual mental availability.
Two things immediately stand out. First, as referenced, there is the long-established truth that great brands, once they have built a reservoir of equity in people’s minds, have immense resilience and staying power. They can often bounce back, rejuvenate themselves and find new audiences in a way that non-branded businesses would struggle to replicate. Equity runs deep. Secondly, true innovation kick starts and builds brands and mental availability. If the product experience is as promised, the innovation, alongside the brand relaunch, will work symbiotically to prompt consideration of the Maxwell House brand. This will start the next cycle of building equity and mental availability. We await the relaunch with interest.
For more on brands being in our minds, read the late, inspirational Jeremy Bullmore’s Brands Lecture Posh Spice and Persil here.