Dive Brief:
- Honey Maid, relaunched by parent Mondelez International in 2012, kicked off its "This Is Wholesome" campaign with Droga5 in April 2014 and has continued to release new spots, including a recent Fourth of July ad featuring an immigrant family.
- In addition to emphasizing "wholesomeness," Honey Maid has also used this campaign to highlight diversity in American families, including same-sex couples, blended, and biracial families.
- Nearly 100 years old, Honey Maid is a decidedly vanilla brand (in reputation, not flavor), so while the campaign has caused some backlash, Mondelez's investment seems to be working. Mondelez senior marketing director Gary Osifchin, who leads marketing for Honey Maid, said that "the brand’s core graham cracker product has seen its business boosted in the high single digits since the campaign began," according to Fast Company Co.Create.
Dive Insight:
Honey Maid is one of several companies that have used marketing campaigns to promote diversity and other social issues of today, generally unapologetically, even in the face of backlash. Last month, Chobani supported LGBT rights in its latest ad campaign, which depicted a same-sex couple waking up together and enjoying Chobani for breakfast, an ad that was slammed by some, including interest group One Million Moms. In 2013, Cheerios ran a commercial featuring a mixed race family talking about Cheerios together, but the ad drew criticism and caustic racist comments. A Coca-Cola Co. ad for the 2014 Super Bowl depicted Americans of all ethnicities with "America the Beautiful" sung in the background in different languages, which also received negative feedback from some viewers.
On the diversity-based ad campaign, Osifchin said, "You might not like all the families being portrayed, but it's relatable. As a marketer, stewarding a brand, it's very important to have that insight right. We took our time making sure that was correct from the get-go, then we saw the amazing ideas the creatives at Droga5 and our other agency partners were creating off of that insight, and the breadth of potential stories, and we pretty readily said yes."