There are lots of brands out there competing for consumers’ attention in different ways. For us, we just want to make sure that we are continuing to be relevant to consumers.
Ciara Dilley, vp of marketing, global foods group at PepsiCo
Through research, while developing the campaign, the agency discovered that eating habits instilled in people by their parents while they were children remained strong, while also reminding them of words of encouragement parents gave them. And that was an insight that Quaker found itself able to champion alongside the notion that, “We are more similar than we are different.”
Having considered including sports stars or adventurers to tell their stories, consumer research kept the team returning to the desire to hear about everyday heroes. This led to the specific idea of exploring a father and son’s relationship over the years, with the added objective of helping men overcome communication or emotional barriers, stemming from one member of the creative team having recently become a father for the first time.
It is also the first commercial campaign to be directed by Charlotte Wells, the filmmaker behind widely acclaimed British movie Aftersun, which tells the story of a father and daughter on holiday in the late 1990s.
While this is a global campaign, it offers a truth that is being re-created and activated at local levels in markets around the world featuring various parent/child combinations for mass impact.
“In a world where there can be so much negativity or there can be so much fast advertising, we felt that the world needed the Quaker story more than ever at the moment,” added Dilley. She also revealed that there has been so much content created that it is likely to be a focus that will run for years.
The campaign plan
This is the brand’s first fully personalized digital campaign with various elements designed contextually to be relevant depending on the medium or time when it runs to motivate audiences to feel good in the mornings. This will include altering the tagline to be relevant to different countries, too.
The “You’ve Got This” campaign initially ran in Canada and Latin America in cinemas and on TV, digital and social media over Christmas—the first time in years Quaker ran ads in theaters. It will expand to additional markets throughout this year.
