Dive Brief:

• Life cereal is again reviving Mikey, a picky eater kid that first appeared in commercials in the early ‘70s and rose to pop cultural prominence, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
• The spokesperson stars in a new musical commercial with a jingle that draws inspiration from the original “Mikey likes it” tagline. The creative depicting a hectic morning in a busy household also bows a new tagline, “I really love my life.” 
• The spot, available in 15- and 30-second cuts, is running on streamers, social media, retail media and audio channels. Life is positioning the campaign as a brand refresh focused on messy mornings and how families can be united around breakfast. 

Dive Insight:

Life’s Mikey character first made a splash in the heyday of TV advertising, becoming a fixture over the course of decades with a tagline that entered the broader pop culture lexicon. Life has searched for its “next Mikey” on a few occasions, including in 1997 and in 2019, when the character was gender-flipped to be a young girl in a campaign titled “Stand off.”

Now, amid a wave of marketing centered on consumer nostalgia, the Quaker-owned brand is bringing the spokesperson back as part of a larger refresh and with some additions, including a new tagline and musical bent. PepsiCo’s internal D3 creative agency is behind the effort. 

Ads that launched on Sept. 12 show the latest Mikey, played by Hudson Uebelhardt, as he details a morning full of mishaps, such as toothpaste getting snagged in his mom’s hair, in song. The turbulence settles when his family gathers around the dining table, recreating an iconic moment as picky eater Mikey enjoys a bowl of Life, leading his siblings to exclaim, “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” The spot closes on Mikey repeating, “I really love my life!”

The upbeat commercials have a heavily digital media plan, appearing on Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, Canela, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, Meta and SiriusXM. Life is also taking advantage of retail media through Walmart Connect, the big-box store’s advertising arm that helps brands place messages close to the point of sale with help from first-party shopper data. 

A deluge of brands have recently dusted off old catchphrases, characters and jingles to tap into a sense of consumer familiarity, while modernizing those assets to recognize that media consumption habits have drifted toward smartphones and streaming. Maybelline New York earlier this month resurrected “Maybe It’s Maybelline,” a tagline that debuted in 1991, with a focus on TikTok and social media influencers.

PepsiCo, Quaker’s parent, has contended with slumping U.S. demand as consumers grapple with rising prices. The Quaker Foods division saw volumes plunge 17% in Q2 in North America, a dip attributed to product recalls over salmonella contamination. Quaker has introduced other marketing initiatives to boost consumer favor. The core Quaker line in February launched its first global brand platform, which spotlights everyday heroes like parents.