Kraft hits a marketing home run

Kraft kicked off new Instant Mac & Cheese advertising and celebrated its release with an online Black Friday promotion that sold out in seconds.

Sporting a new tagline—“Best Thing Ever”—Kraft introduced it by making a 65-inch flat-screen TV box filled with 65 boxes of its macaroni and cheese mix. It is not known how many of these promotion boxes were produced.

The oversized boxes were available on the Walmart website at midnight Friday morning in a kickoff “Best Thing Ever” promotion Kraft called “Mac Friday.” 

Cost was $19.36 each, in a nod to the year Kraft was founded. The price point for each individual box inside the TV-sized outer box that normally sells for around $1.39 was less than 30 cents, an estimated 70-85 percent savings, depending on local retailer pricing.

It was all gone in seconds.

Customers claimed they spent hours hovering over their computers on the Walmart website to get a jump on snagging a box. Many came up empty.

Negative comments on social media soared as people who missed out vented their frustrations.

• “I literally had it in my cart and it sold out while I was hitting the finish button.”
• “I…stayed up for this and I literally have to go to work tomorrow.”
• “…for anyone curious, this did not last 5 seconds. no, I’m not kidding.”