Kellogg's Vector strives for authenticity with YouTube star
When Kellogg set out to launch a new campaign for Vector bars, it was faced with a couple of big challenges: the market was already crowded and many consumers questioned the claims made by sports nutrition bars.
Toronto-based TraffikGroup concluded the solution was for the brand to seem authentic and engaged.
“A lot of brands over-promise,” said Adrianne Wotherspoon, managing director, strategic planning development for TraffikGroup. “
Traffik engaged by hiring Gavin Peacock, a Toronto-based extreme sports enthusiast behind 365 Days of Awesome, a selfie video montage he filmed with his GoPro camera and posted on YouTube. Peacock — in all his shirtless, ripped glory — can be seen catapulting himself into a lake, cliff diving, snowboarding and barefoot water-skiing, all to a dubstep soundtrack.
It has garnered more than 3 million views on YouTube. Traffik collaborated with Peacock to make a similar video for its “Vectory” campaign, the goal of which is to attract fitness consumers.
Wotherspoon said Peacock also represents two of the key market segment attributes that Kellogg wants to be associated with Vector: goal-setting and inspiration.
“This is a guy who had a vision and made it happen. He did it for personal satisfaction and for reaching his own goals,” said Wotherspoon. “He fulfilled a really wonderful aspect of inspiration that we felt would be compelling for all the Vector fans and the people we’re hoping to attract.”
As for which demographic that is, exactly, Traffik won’t say. “We want to get away from a demographic,” said Wotherspoon. “We are trying to capture a mindset. It’s not for the brand to determine their goals but to attract the mindset of progressing and being better.”
Probably a wise choice. A 2014 report by London-based market research group Mintel Group Ltd. showed snack and nutritional bar consumers cover a very wide range from young men to working mothers.
This article first appeared in Marketing Magazine