Smart activation from Dolmio

I saw this nice bit of brand activation inside Sainsbury's head office the other week. First, is a core range extension of a lasagne kit, with pasta sheets, creamy sauce and tomato sauce:

Plus, there is a special promotion offering a free lasagne dish if you buy the kit:

I thought this was a smart idea on several levels.

1. Add real value for consumers

Lots of promotional and product ideas are gimmicky, and fail to generate real interest. The lasagne kit makes it much easier for people make a popular dish. And the free dish is a really nice item that I think people would actually use.

2. Reinforce brand usage

What's clever about this activation is that the promotional offer of a lasagne dish is linked directly to usage, and so should help drive brand usage, growing the core.

3. Reinforce memory structure

The kit and the dish both feature the characters that have starred in Dolmio communication for more than a decade, tapping into and reinforcing distinctive memory structure

4. Brand equity building

The kit and the dish both help enhance brand equity, rather than destroying it in the way that price cuts do, as covered in this post here.

In conclusion, a nice example of brand activation that builds the brand and hopefully also builds the business.