Episode 129 - Wholly Veggie Ad Reviewed by TikTok, The Responsible Marketing Agency and Virgin Media O2

Wholly Veggie aim to make vegetables fun and accessible - but what is their target market? In their latest ad chosen by Contagious, “Haha the Kids Just Ate Vegetables,” they seem to be poking fun at children and trying to appeal to TikTok savvy young parents.

Our guests Ed Wilson (Brand Partnerships Manager at TikTok UK), Hannah Mirza (Founder of The Responsible Marketing Agency), and Johnny Winn (Head of Advertising at Virgin Media O2) had mixed opinions. There’s a catchy song, some dubious references to childhood trauma, and certainly plenty of humour.

What do you think of this week’s Advertisers Watching Ads episode? Would you rate it more than 3 out of 5?

Wholly Veggie Ad Reviewed by TikTok, The Responsible Marketing Agency and Virgin Media O2

Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!

Tom Ollerton 0:00

Hello, and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads.

Tom Ollerton 0:31

My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, and I'd like to say thank you to our partners, contagious.com, who have helped source the ad this week. But before we get to the ad, let's meet this week's guests.

Ed Wilson 0:42

My name is Ed Wilson. I am from TikTok UK and I manage our brand partnerships.

Hannah Mirza 0:48

I'm Hannah. I'm the founder of The Responsible Marketing Agency.

Johnny Winn 0:51

Hi, there, I am Johnny Winn, and I'm Head of Advertising at Virgin Media O2.

Tom Ollerton 0:55

This week's ad is from Wholly Veggie that are trying to flog us cauliflower as chicken wings. It is bold. It's a bit weird. It's got a song, but is it good enough?

Tom Ollerton 1:51

I would like you to vote on a scale of one to five on how good you thought this was? One, two, three... A four, a three, and a two. That is the most divisive ad we've had on this show for a very long time. So Hannah, that is quite the ad! What... Can you give us a bit of background on the wider campaign?

Hannah Mirza 2:10

Yeah, it's actually part of a series. And there's two other ads that I've seen in this series using that same rock overlay. The actual product is some kind of cauliflower buffalo wing. All of the kind of tick boxes for some kind of vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, I think it's an interesting way to go to market in terms of advertising this chicken alternative, which is also pushing vegetables to children, which we know is a, is a long, long held stereotype that children don't eat vegetables these days, or perhaps ever. So certainly playing up the trope of that.

Johnny Winn 2:13

I'm a parent of young twins, four-year old twins. I loved it. I thought it was very funny. I think that, you know, the humour meant that they had creative license to go in that direction. And I don't think that anyone's going to take it seriously that they're actually meant to, you know, cause children trauma through eating their product. I think everyone will get it as a joke. For me, I find it very funny. It reflected my reality, which is that I've kids who often don't want to eat stuff, and it's, you know, it's a pain, you want them to eat something but they don't want to eat.

Tom Ollerton 2:59

And Ed, it's like four mega TikTok trends, all like combining and it... Certainly my view of TikTok on my feed, so is this just absolutely ready for your platform?

Ed Wilson 3:29

Would that work on TikTok on its own? No, I don't think so. But there's a lot of ways that you can spin out the story to make it more, more TikTok native. It took me a few watches when I watched this ad offline to actually understand what the first line was, what the, what the kid says first, I couldn't really understand that. So I mean, just based on that alone, that's going to be skipped on social pretty quick. But as a TV/cinema ad, I really loved it.

Tom Ollerton 3:55

Having a song in an ad, it's actually the brand's own song... Certainly haven't had it on this show. So I'm curious to know what you thought about that..

Hannah Mirza 4:02

Yeah, I actually read that the song is available on Spotify, and you can overlay it to your own social media videos as well. So they're obviously trying to spread the song, there's the different versions of this ad with the words changed depending on the message that they were conveying. So it's quite creative, that they were pushing this song, I wondered if they could have totally flipped that and made it that the kids were smarter than the parents and they actually do things that are good for their body and the environment. And you know, if there was a clever way they could have spun it and still kept that disruptive kind of approach that they took particularly around that, you know, they want to have this subversive brand positioning that's breaking the mold of traditional healthy vegetable advertising. But I just don't think they did it in a, in a truly clever way. I think there was some kind of some Marmite effect to some of the elements of the ad.

Ed Wilson 4:57

Speaking as a nonparent myself, I thought the copy or the lyrics of the song were really funny and you can kind of tell it is written by like Millennials/Gen Z because those topics are just so out in the open now. It's almost like a badge of honor to like talk about, you know, working through traumas and stuff like that. I thought it like positioned them really well for like a young parent audience. Something else I really loved about it was that it was so bold, you know, it wasn't like an emotionally driven ad, which... Obviously, the research shows works better. It wasn't that. It wasn't like a banter, type ad, which I also don't like. It was just such a bold concept to come up with their own song. I thought it was brilliant because of that, because they went totally against the grain like, you don't see that very often. And it just stood out so much for me because of that, because it was different.

Tom Ollerton 5:59

Well, I think that it's interesting that I haven't seen on TV before is that it's taking a concept, which you do see in social a lot on TikTok, on Instagram, a parent posting videos of their kids doing stupid stuff, and kind of making fun of them for it. That's like a very common thing that is just pervasive across social media. And they've taken that to TV. So I've never seen kids mocked on TV before. I mean, that's just, you know, it sounds wrong, but they've done it. And they've done it, I think, using a sort of, you know, I think inspired by all that content that's online, of, you know, parents sharing funny videos of their kids doing silly stuff, throwing tantrums or whatnot. So I think that's provocative to me is like they've taken something from a different medium and applied it to TV.

Ed Wilson 6:50

Even though it's a lovely piece of creative in my opinion, I don't think that is a social ad. There's like other ways that it can be spun out into social. Thought the fact that the song was kind of offensive to some, stood out to others is only going to improve that cut through like, people always say they hate certain jingles and certain songs, but they really do get in your head. And I think that's another really strong indicator that this ad is going to cut through and people are going to remember it whether they want to or not, it's super, super memorable when they see that on TV. Even if you're not looking at the screen. The song is gonna build that memorability.

Hannah Mirza 7:29

I was reading up about the product and the taste credentials, which they don't speak to in any of it. In fact, they're implying that when they do eat them, and they find out they're veggies, they lose, they lose the plot, but actually 220 reviews of the products, they had a 4.5 star rating, and actually, most people who were reviewing it, were asking where they could buy them because they loved them so much and they wanted more of them. So I found it really interesting that they needed to go down that route because it sounds like there was a lot of demand for their product. And it wasn't that well distributed. It had incredible kind of credentials from mostly adults reviewing them as a really good chicken substitute. And it felt like they would kind of miss the mark on the target market if they're in that much demand. And a lot of the reviews were people wanting them for kind of a vegan or vegetarian or even sustainable lifestyle, they kind of had a huge message to go after there without kind of going down the feeding kids vegetables, roots. So I was surprised at that. I felt they maybe missed a bit of where the big audience was.

Johnny Winn 8:31

Well, I find it interesting that if you look at some of the other works they did like an out of home, that line does make more sense because it's kind of... they're using it pretty much all the time. And I think in that, then it kind of immediately conveys what the product's purpose is, which is, essentially to trick people into thinking that this tastes like chicken or whatnot. I thought it was clever how they had a little jingle in, I think a lot of brands have done that very well. It can be memorable, if they keep, if they keep it, keep doing it consistently. And also, I mean the you know the name of the product is a pun on "Holy shit." It's kind of a Gonzo brand to begin with. So I think all this stuff that they're doing, it feels well-crafted for what they're trying to achieve, which is provocative, you know, little bit subversive advertising.

Tom Ollerton 9:16

What can the industry really learn from this?

Ed Wilson 9:18

I think the industry can learn from it by just taking a risk on a potentially, you know, quite boring FMCG, CPG product, take a bold risk, do something different, for once, please. I thought that was a big takeout.

Tom Ollerton 9:34

Would you sign this off? Yes or no? In its current form as part of a wider campaign? One, two, three, thumbs up or thumbs down? So, Ed, Hannah, Johnny, thank you so much for your time. We'll see you all next week.