RWRetailWire
Back to Discussions
DISCUSSION

Brand hops on Trump's anti-Mexico bandwagon

Written by George Anderson

As widely reported earlier this summer, companies including NBC, Macy's and others ran as fast and far away as possible from their business associations with Donald Trump after he made comments depicting illegal immigrants to the U.S. as being largely made up of individuals the Mexican government did not want on its soil, including drug dealers, murderers and rapists. In a bit of a marketing surprise, there is one company, Leaf Brands, which has come out in support of Mr. Trump's call for a boycott of Mondolez International after the company moved 600 jobs related to manufacturing Oreos from a facility in Chicago to another in Salinas, south of the border.

Leaf Brands, for those not familiar, is relaunching Hydrox after the cookie brand was off the market for seven years. Hydrox, while billed as the first American sandwich cookie, has failed over the years under various owners to compete with Oreos.

Leaf Brands CEO Ellia Kassoff extended an invitation for Mr. Trump to visit the company's plant outside of Los Angeles where it will manufacture Hydrox.

Hydrox cookies
Image: Leaf Brands

"We want consumers to know 'The original sandwich cookie' will always be made in the U.S. and Mr. Trump's campaign focuses on growing American jobs so we decided to invite him to our plant," said Mr. Kassoff in a statement. "We are in no way picking candidates or jumping into politics but we want to showcase how a company can create a high-quality product at a good price, without moving operations out of the U.S."

Mr. Kassoff said the relaunch of Hydrox will mark a return to the cookie's original recipe.

"You will notice the 'Other Guys' use high fructose corn syrup and other low quality ingredients because they're all about increasing margins, even if that means moving to Mexico," said Mr. Kassoff. "We think it's more important to sell an American-made product that only uses the best ingredients. That's why we rolled back the formula to a recipe which doesn't include any hydrogenated oils or HFCS which were added to the cookie when Kellogg's and Keebler owned it."

Amazon.com is the first retailer to work with Leaf Brands on the relaunch of Hydrox. According to Mr. Kassoff, a list of national and regional grocery chains are also anxious to stock the brand.

"The hardest part of bringing back such a well-known brand is managing the initial run on product and keeping up with production," said Cody Sheean, VP of marketing and international sales for Leaf Brands. "We call it, 'The Twinkie Effect,' relating to the huge rush of consumers buying Twinkies after they were brought back a few years ago."

Discussion Thread0