Dive Brief:
- Campbell's Chunky is teaming with Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay for a campaign that highlights the importance of taking lunch breaks, per a press release.
- Titled "Lunchtime is Your Halftime," the campaign includes two video spots featuring McVay coaching millennial-aged men on the benefits of eating a nutritious lunch. The spots — the first of which aired last night (Sept. 9) during the NFL season opener — will run throughout the football season as stills and video clips on linear TV, digital streaming, social media and platforms like Twitch.
- The latest campaign from the official soup sponsor of the NFL draws on football themes to spur an age group that has largely shunned lunchtime as a regular habit. The effort was made with agency Leo Burnett U.S.
Dive Insight:
Campbell's Chunky is looking to inspire busy millennials to take lunch breaks by framing them as the day's "halftime." Millennial workers often see lunch as an obstacle to productivity, with 37% having reported feeling unempowered to take a lunch break, per a 2019 Tork study. These habits conflict with a generational desire for a longer and more regular lunch break — also found in the study — which Campbell's Chunky is championing through its campaign.
Rams head coach McVay serves as the voice of the effort, a strategic choice given his background in delivering halftime speeches to pump up players. In the spots, he drives a golf cart and interrupts millennial men on their lunch breaks, displaying similar behavior and intensity as he would during a football game's halftime while inspiring the same message of refueling and entering the second half properly nourished.
The appearance of McVay — the first coach to star in a Campbell's Chunky spot — also signals a shift in the soup brand's engagement strategy. Whereas previous campaigns have used NFL players to promote Campbell's products, McVay represents a more everyday man, potentially driving interest from consumers by being relatable. McVay is a millennial whose young age and lack of experience have been seen as a concern for his role — an obstacle some millennial men may find pertinent to their own professional lives.
"Today's 'Do-It-All-Guy' is continuously evolving — he has a growing appetite to do more, and be more, and ultimately needs food that works as hard as he does," Mark Tumelty, Campbell Soup Company's vice president of marketing, soup and broth, said in the release.
In addition to running the campaign as stills and videos on traditional channels like linear TV and social media, Campbell's is planning to activate on platforms including Twitch. The move demonstrates how consumers are becoming increasingly fragmented across digital channels, requiring brands to create versatile marketing efforts to extend their reach.
Campbell's has previously leveraged cultural trends to drive engagement of its products. The company's Chunky brand last year teamed with Target to sponsor a Madden NFL competition on Twitch, and earlier this summer the company crafted a nonfungible token collection to promote a redesign of its labels.
