Here are 6 of the Best New Food Campaigns Right Now

Every quarter we publish a sampling of recent, noteworthy food campaigns from the worlds of Commodity, Packaged Foods, and Branded Produce, with the purpose of informing and inspiring those with similar interests. Here’s just a few that caught our attention in the second quarter of 2018.

Cheerios “A Million Acts of Good”

As detailed in our recent post, How to Get Appetizing Results from Your Food Media Buy, product placement has become big business. Embedded marketing and brand integration is a popular tactic to combat the use of DVRs to skip traditional commercial breaks on TV. A powerful recent example of this is Cheerios’ partnership with The Ellen Show to inspire “One Million Acts of Good.” The One Million Acts of Good movement encourages people to engage in acts of kindness – big or small – all around the world, and to share their stories online with Ellen and Cheerios. Prizes are awarded to selected “do-gooders.” The promotion fits well with Cheerios’ theme of “Good Goes Around” and helps Cheerios form a more personal consumer connection with their brands.

Pilgrims Choice “Cheese Dreams”

A surreal new spot for Pilgrims Choice Cheese combines puppets, live action and computer animation to present a truly bizarre vision. In it, a woman’s arms stretch out like long snakes into a restaurant on a hill, where food springs to life and runs from the plate of a pirate with socks for a beard. The idea comes from research stating that eating cheese can lead to strange, vivid dreams. The ad further serves as a tool to source more unusual dreams via Facebook and Twitter for a digital and in-store campaign. The premise is fanciful and fun, and the execution is anything but “cheesy”.

Love, Dessert and The Bachelor

In a spot airing during “The Bachelor”, Kaitlyn Bristowe and Shawn Booth of “Bachelorette” fame prove that their love is still going strong as they snuggle up on the couch with a Reddi-Wip dessert to watch that night’s show. The tongue-in-cheek commercial references a buzzed-about episode from last season’s “Bachelor” during which contestant Corrine salaciously applied Reddi-Wip to her chest for bachelor Nick to lick off. Reddi-Wip’s message is that dessert, like romance, shouldn’t be complicated, and with Reddi-Wip, you get “Instant Greatification”. It’s a fun inside joke sure to get the attention of the younger demo that watches the show.

Pom Wonderful “Impaled by a Dolphin”

In Pom Wonderful’s latest digital campaign, an everyday guy has been impaled by a live dolphin and now goes about his days with a large sea mammal wriggling in his chest. Oddly enough, the freak accident has actually made his life better by motivating him not to take his health for granted. The video is a sort of parody of medical and pharmaceutical commercials taken to the extreme. It encourages you to start taking better care of yourself today, rather than waiting for some sort of life-changing moment to inspire you. Most people might expect that if a man was going to be impaled by a denizen of the deep, it would be a swordfish. But according to the spot’s creators, that would have been a bit “too on the nose”.

Tenderstem “Little Adventures”

Described as part broccoli, part kale and wholly delicious, Tenderstem is its own breed of vegetable. The brand recently commissioned renowned photographer Carl Warner to create four unique “foodscapes” for an equally bold new print campaign. The ads depict Tenderstem in the midst of various adventurous activities, including climbing a mountain of potatoes, hang gliding over a curry volcano, bungee jumping into a noodle river and surfing a lettuce leaf wave. Each is tagged “Make every dish a little adventure” and communicates the versatility of Tenderstem while attempting to inspire consumers to try something new and different. It’s a graphic and attention-getting way to break through the clutter of ads featuring food on plates while still creating strong appetite appeal.