Dive Brief:

• Stouffer’s is leaning into the anxiety people experience trying to figure out dinner with an integrated campaign that will appear during the Olympics, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
• The concept was inspired by what the brand terms “dinner dread,” or the uncertainty that tends to creep up around 4 p.m. around what to eat for dinner. Stouffer’s offers a solution to the problem in creative that features a new tagline, “When the Clock Strikes Dinner.”
• Media buys, including digital out-of-home (OOH) placements, are timed to catch people as the dinner dread hour approaches. A Spotify activation and print ads masking as placements for other products like perfume also vie for an element of surprise.

Dive Insight:

Stouffer’s is addressing a daily conundrum for on-the-go consumers with what the Nestlé-owned brand is calling one of its biggest integrated campaigns in years. WPP’s VML New York handled “When the Clock Strikes Dinner,” a title that is also the prepared frozen meals marketer’s new tagline.

In spots “Homeward” and “Wednesday Walk,” people going about their day see the clock strike 4 p.m. and are suddenly hounded by the question of “What’s for dinner?” from passing construction workers, babies in strollers and even static billboards and garden gnomes. Stouffer’s comes to the rescue with easy-to-prep meals. The ads will run during the Olympics, giving them a large stage.

Additional media buys seek to catch hungry consumers off guard in a similar fashion to what happens to the characters in the commercials. Stouffer’s is taking over this week’s issues of People and Us Weekly with four consecutive ads posing as promotions for other categories, like jewelry and apparel, but carrying the refrain of “What’s for dinner?” Digital OOH has the same creative bent: One billboard is modeled on a typical razor ad breaking out product characteristics, but instead of boasting of four blades, the copy reads, “What’s 4 dinner?”

VML worked with sister WPP agency OpenMind on the outdoor strategy, which will see ads go live in Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Washington D.C., Indianapolis, Tampa and Los Angeles in the window between 4-6 p.m., or when Stouffer’s believes dinner dread takes hold.

“As consumers encounter our campaign flipping through a magazine, commuting to work or listening to music on Spotify, we hope they will be inspired to add Stouffer’s to their cart and stock their freezers and know there’s always a solution for dinner,” said Megan McLaughlin, senior brand manager at Nestlé, in a statement.

Stouffer’s campaign mirrors a recent one from rival Oscar Mayer around the Kraft Heinz brand’s thick-cut bacon and its 12-hour smoking process. Ads showing the salt-cured pork sizzling on a grill end before shifting to seemingly unrelated commercials for lip gloss and men’s razors that are eventually revealed to still be for Oscar Mayer.