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Branded Product Targeted at a Specific Market: Lean Cuisine

Lean Cuisine is a line of frozen dinners produced by Stouffers, one of the leading purveyors of such products in the nation. But unlike Stouffers traditional offerings like hearty, bread-topped macaroni and cheese, Lean Cuisine is primarily marketed to women, specifically women on a diet. The Lean Cuisine product line does offer some Stouffer's classics, like macaroni and cheese and French bread pizzas, but with reduced calorie ingredients. Still, its most famous tagline stresses the sensuous nature of Lean Cuisine's diet dinners for women. One recent advertisement for Lean Cuisine went along these lines: "I had sesame breaded chicken tenderloins in a tangy Asian style plum sauce....It's not just lean. It's cuisine!" free recall for Lean Cuisine might go like this: It's not just (blank). It's cuisine! Because of the name of the product, Lean Cuisine's use of this kind of prompt is reasonably strong. The emphasis on the tag line is that not simply that the product is low in calories, but that it actually tastes good. This is reminiscent of Diet Coke's tag line: "Just for the taste of it -- Diet Coke!' A cued recall would be even more effective, given that the question: "What company has the slogan 'It's not just lean, it's cuisine," has both the name of the company as well as the image that is being branded, namely that the diet frozen dinner is both a diet product and tastes good as well. The female-focused nature of the branding is stressed by the use of a word like cuisine, which suggests something 'gourmet' and delicate, and the stress upon leanness indicates the consumer's openness about dieting, and the fact that eating low-calorie food is viewed in a positive manner. This is also evidence of the female nature of Lean Cuisine's core consumer base.

Lean Cuisine's most obvious competitors in the frozen dinner market are Weight Watchers and Healthy Choice. More than these two product lines, Lean Cuisine stresses the fact that its product tastes good. While all of these products are low in calories, and 'healthy' in the sense that they tend to be lower in fat and sodium than ordinary frozen meals, Lean Cuisine tries to imply that its product is superior because of its taste.

On its official website, it also proclaims "Do something good for yourself," again suggesting that the target consumer is a woman who 'does a lot' for other people, but probably not very much for herself. The product range also contains a variety of offerings, many of which have international titles like its current Panini line, or which stress calorie control and health, like its Spa Cuisines.