In $2 Million Ad Campaign, FreshDirect to Emphasize Food Quality

By STUART ELLIOTT

FreshDirect, the online home-delivery grocer, is preparing a new advertising approach as it seeks to, er, um, freshen its brand image.

A campaign scheduled to begin this week is to introduce a theme, “Grocery shopping perfected,” that is intended as a more engaging way to express the company's philosophy than current lines like “A new standard for grocery shopping.”

(Critics of FreshDirect who decry the tax breaks the company received to build a headquarters in the Bronx or complain about the traffic and fumes generated by its trucks may wince at seeing anything FreshDirect does described as “perfected.”)

The new theme is part of a revamped pitch aimed at busy consumers - primarily working mothers - who care enough about the quality and provenance of the food they buy to pay FreshDirect's prices.

The campaign is the first work from the DiMassimo Goldstein ad agency in New York, which won the Fr eshDirect creative account in a review. The company previously worked with another New York agency, Gotham, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

The campaign includes print advertisements, ads on the side of the seemingly ubiquitous FreshDirect trucks, direct mail, outdoor signs, online banner ads and a presence at events like food festivals.

The campaign takes a humorously light-hearted tack, presenting FreshDirect as the alternative to exaggerated, Herculean efforts to ensure that groceries meet the high standards of its target audience.

A direct-mail piece that shows a woman warring with a bear for salmon asks, “Why fight when you can have the best without breaking a sweat?”

In another ad, a woman is waiting on a servant to empty her private jet of all the fancy cheeses she just bought. FreshDirect is for you, the ad declares, “In case you have to cancel your European cheese shopping trip.”

The new campaign is intended to be a more evolved way to market FreshDirect than the previous method, “a very direct marketing approach, pounding out offers” in the forms of discount coupons, said John Leeman, chief marketing officer at FreshDirect. He joined the company last year after working at media and advertising agencies like Mindshare, Carat and Cliff Freeman & Partners.

The campaign comes after FreshDirect conducted research that suggested the company aim its pitches more directly at “busy people who care about the quality of the food,” Mr. Leeman said, to the point that whether the food is, say, locally produced, sustainably grown, organic or gluten free becomes “part of the value proposition, not just price.” (In other words, to paraphrase the old Hallmark slogan, they care enough about the very best to pay more.)

The focus on the food itself is also intended to counter whatever qualms potential customers may have from shopping at a Web site, wher e they do not get to pick out the merchandise themselves as they would at brick-and-mortar high-end supermarkets like Whole Foods or specialty stores like Zabar's.

“We needed to prove to them that just because they can't see our food on a shelf,” Mr. Leeman said, “the ‘direct' part of FreshDirect ensures that it gets to us directly and then back out to them directly much faster, and fresher, than it would in a store situation, where there are more middlemen and warehouses.”

DiMassimo Goldberg “nailed” that aspect of the campaign, Mr. Leeman said, by being able to “project the origin, the source of the food and romanticizing it.”

“We're trying to show people the ideal situation they wish they could attain but can't get there,” he added.

Mark DiMassimo, chief executive and chief creative officer at DiMassimo Goldstein, said the campaign seeks to portray FreshDirect as “this combination of premium quality and convenience.”

“But if you went out there with ‘premium quality and convenience' ” as the theme, “it wouldn't make anyone's mouth water,” he added, laughing. “This is what you need an ad agency for.”

The intended audience for the campaign, Mr. DiMassimo said, knows that “if you have the time to knock yourself out, there are a number of great stores to go to.”

So the ads suggest that “FreshDirect feeds your life,” he added, because “the food is fresher when we do the work for you.”

The budget for the campaign is hard to estimate because of the value of the ads that appear on the sides of the FreshDirect trucks, which serve as billboards that are hard to miss in many urban neighborhoods.

“If we had to pay for the truck sides,” Mr. Leeman said, the campaign would be valued at $5 million. The spending in media will total $2 million, he added.

FreshDirect is considering adding radio commercials to the campaign in 2013, Mr. Leeman said .

To address some of the complaints about FreshDirect, the company is expanding delivery service to neighborhoods that could be characterized as food deserts, he added, and testing deliveries in two ZIP codes in the Bronx to people who receive food stamps.

And FreshDirect is planning “its first steps toward a transition to an environmentally sustainable fleet of trucks,” Mr. Leeman said.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.