Powerful Yogurt was introduced in the United States in March, the brainchild of Carlos Ramirez, the company’s founder and CEO, who said he saw a gap in the market for male-focused yoghurt branding.
When it comes to yoghurt marketing, Ramirez says:“Guys are really left out. We knew this would be a little bit controversial, but we designed a product with guys in mind and we did the research with guys.”
The yoghurt has a simple, bold design in dark colours, and its ad campaign, based on the slogan “find your inner abs”, is intended to target fitness-focused men.
Ramirez says it is the product’s size and high protein level that make it male-oriented – particularly for men who might normally drink a protein shake after exercise, but would prefer something tastier.
“It’s a lot bigger, and it’s heavy and thick,”he said, noting that the yoghurt will be sold in 8-ounce portions – about 237 g in European terms. That’s nearly twice the size of the average 125 g single-serve yoghurt.
But Ramirez insists that ordinary men (and women) can enjoy Powerful Yogurt too.
“It will be in mainstream supermarkets,”he said.“…Gyms and fitness centres are a great showcase, but the volume is not there.”
While the yoghurt has been marketed as ‘Greek yoghurt’ in the US, Ramirez said the company was still considering whether this would be the right positioning in the EU, in light of recent concerns about whether Europeans understand ‘Greek’ as a claim about a product’s origin.
“For us it is less about being Greek and more about the product itself, and that it has a lot of protein,” he said.
However, even the ‘high protein’ positioning faces a cultural divide, as consumers in the United States tend to consider high protein as a positive attribute in its own right, while Europeans may need more explanation of the product’s nutritional benefits, he said.
Powerful Yogurt has joined with Irish company Irepak Ltd to supply four flavours of the fat-free yoghurt throughout the UK and Ireland from the first quarter of 2014: plain, banana, mango, and strawberry.