C'mon! Use your noodle.

Cavatappi

Rigatoni

Farfalle

Fettuccini

These are types of pasta one might expect to receive when asking someone to send noodles. In typical millennial or Gen Z fashion, one may even shorthand that request to simply “send noods.” One might even giggle at the homophonic and suggestive wordplay in such a request: Send noods? Sounds like send nudes... 😳😅

Though we can’t know for sure how the brainstorming session went for the marketing department at Kraft Foods, we do know that they came up with a punny multichannel marketing campaign that left consumers with a rather sour taste on social media (Chen, 2020; Rice, 2020).

The campaign, which launched amid the global COVID-19 pandemic on October 6, 2020, aimed to promote Kraft Food’s signature Macaroni and Cheese products by offering a way for people to connect with their socially-distanced loved ones by sending them a free box of cheesy pasta dinner (Business Wire, 2020). The first 7,000 people who responded to the company’s Tweet with specific hashtags (#SendNoods and #Giveaway) or entered to win on their campaign website (now defunct, www.sendnoods.com) would be eligible for a free box of mac and cheese.

Noods. As in noodles, not nudies.

The suggestive nature of the campaign was not lost on social media and was met with sharp criticism among members of the product’s key demographic: parents of young children. According to BuzzFeed News reporter Tanya Chen, mothers angrily accused Kraft of “sexualizing mac’n’cheese” and preying on children (2020).

“This is not okay. Don’t you realize that a huge portion of the people who actually eat your mac n’ cheese are children?! Please delete this!! Unacceptable! Switching over to Annie’s organics.” - a former Kraft fan (Chen, 2020).

Despite running out of free mac and cheese boxes within two hours of the campaign’s launch, Kraft issued an apology and removed the steamy content from their social media channels (Bradley, 2020; Rice, 2020). Evidence of the #SendNoods campaign has effectively disappeared from Kraft Mac and Cheese’s official Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube accounts. Now, all that remains of the incident online are screenshots, blog posts, and a handful of news articles.

This begs the question: was this campaign an actual failure? While it may have pushed the envelope a bit too far for some of Kraft Mac and Cheese’s 1.68M followers across their social media channels, the humor is arguably appropriate for at least a portion their market (I.e., college students and younger adults). The campaign was designed for the engagement of an older audience, rather than the product’s younger consumers who would likely be ineligible for the free promotional products. Where it falls short is in its tone deafness to and apparent ignorance of how the adult humor would land for children and their parents, by extension.

That said, sex sells and so does scandal. Although we don’t have public visibility into the company’s sales and revenues during this specific time, the #SendNoods campaign may have garnered reach beyond Kraft Mac and Cheese’s social media followers, thanks to the word-of-mouth buzz the campaign generated in the news (Humphreys, 2016). Did Kraft lose some loyal customers to their boxed cheesy noodle competitors? Maybe. Did the campaign get people to talk about Kraft Mac and Cheese? Definitely.

A more family friendly approach I might have taken would be to lean into their current branding that the product is “something worth smiling about” (n.d.). This sentiment is visually reinforced by a single bright orange macaroni noodle overlayed on the iconic blue background, with the ends upturned to symbolize a smile. Rather than encouraging people to send noods, the same campaign model could be revised to encourage fans to send images of their cheesiest smiles to let their socially-distanced loved ones know that they’re missed. Instead of engaging by sharing photos of noodles, Kraft’s followers could share selfies with a face covered in the remnants of their favorite orange pasta dinner, using the hashtag #SendSmiles rather than #SendNoods.

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References

Bradley, D. (2020, October 6). Kraft quickly runs out of free Mac and Cheese with #SendNoods campaign. PRWeek. https://www.prweek.com/article/1696520/kraft-quickly-runs-free-mac-cheese-sendnoods-campaign

Chen, T. (2020, October 12). Angry moms and QAnon believers attacked Kraft’s “Send Noods” campaign for sexualizing mac’n’cheese. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tanyachen/moms-attack-kraft-send-noods-campaign

Business Wire (2020, October 6). Kraft mac and cheese encourages you to send noods to friends and family. Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201006005258/en/Kraft-Mac-Cheese-Encourages-You-to-Send-Noods-to-Friends-and-Family

Humpherys, A. (2016). Social media: Enduring principles. Oxford University Press.

Kraft macaroni and cheese (n.d.) Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.kraftmacandcheese.com/

Rice, N. (2020, October 13). Kraft takes down ‘Send Noods’ campaign following social media backlash. People. https://people.com/food/kraft-removes-send-noods-campaign-after-online-backlash/