While exploring Berlin last week I came across some out-of-home marketing consisting of food with faces. I’ll admit I’m easily entertained by inanimate objects with faces and loved these. Unfortunately, I don’t understand German and didn’t know what exactly the campaign was about at the time. Some recent googling revealed that this was a campaign to reduce food waste though, hence the sad faces. While admiring these images my mother-in-law pointed out how similar these are with the Eat Them To Defeat Them advert launched by ITV and Veg Power.
The hugely backed ad campaign sees numerous supermarkets and various food celebrities band together to fund the campaign. The campaign grew from alarming facts on childhood obesity and the lack of vegetable consumption. We may not think about it but just like us children are also surrounded with advertisements and are swayed much easier than us. Out of all the food and drink adverts on TV only 1.2% is advertising veg.
Watching this, like me, you may think that it’s a little too cheesy and over the top. We have to think about the target audience though. The whole point in this campaign is to get kids to eat more veg. If you think back to the shows you watched when you were young you would probably find them cheesy now too.
Adam&EveDDB took a different apporach with this ad recruiting children as our heroes to save us from the killer veg by eating them. This makes a refreshing change from the healthy eating ads that preach healthy eating and shame bad foods, such as Change4life TV ads.
Verdict
One of the main things I like about this campaign is that so many supermarkets and people have come together to promote a shared initiative. No brand is mentioned it’s just a shared value and the will to do something different.
There is no clear way to see how successful this campaign is at the moment. The fact that people are talking about it is always a good start but Veg Power also say that they will release the results on their website when available.
I hope you have enjoyed my brief look into Veg Power’s Campaign Eat Them To Defeat Them.
As always, I would love to see your comments below and I’m always up for a discussion on any of my blog topics if you want to drop me a message via LinkedIn or Instagram. How well do you think the campaign works?
Further reading
Featured image courtesy of YouTube/Funny Commercials.
2 Comments
Add Yours →Are you kidding???
This is possibly the worst idea for an ad that targets children (especially younger ones).
Our hard work to make her like and eat veg went down the drain after our girl watched this ad.
Today she refused to eat her veg, suprise suprise, because she is now scared of them!!
I haven’t seen the reaction children have had to this advert first hand so it’s not something I can speak about much. I can only really speculate and look at this from a creative perspective. I understand it may not be great for younger children and sorry to hear it has affected your child in this way. In a time when superheroes are so popular, you can see where the creative came from for this ad. Children are being taught to be fearless. The ad is meant to empower children and make something like eating vegetables something they want to do.
Possibly the timing of this ad on TV was wrong showcasing to an audience younger than what they wanted to aim for hence your daughter seeing it. They may not have also tested the ad out fully I don’t know but I doubt it was ever intended to scare your daughter from eating her veg.