Sweetgreen taps celeb chef David Chang to promote new sustainable salad

Dive Brief:

Healthy fast-food chain Sweetgreen partnered with celebrity chef David Chang and U.S.-based commercial seaweed farm Atlantic Sea Farms for a new sustainable menu item, the company shared with Marketing Dive.
To promote the new Tingly Sweet Potato + Kelp Bowl, Sweetgreen is running a video series starring Chang chatting with three fish puppets. The humorous series includes 6-, 15-, 30- and 60-second spots. In one of the videos, Chang cooks for the fish puppets and discusses the importance of using sustainable seaweed.
The campaign was created by Sweetgreen's in-house agency team, as well as creative agency Beautiful Coup. The national rollout includes ads on social media, YouTube, out-of-home (OOH), mobile, audio and search.

Dive Insight:

Sweetgreen's new video series starring David Chang uses humor to convey a message of sustainability within the fast-food space, as the brand uses both purpose-driven and celebrity-influencer tactics to market its latest menu offering.

Many consumers are looking for ways to be more sustainable in their daily lives and are attracted to purchasing from companies that make it easy for them to make environmentally friendly choices. Sweetgreen's latest menu item addresses these consumer desires in the form of a new product, the Tingly Sweet Potato + Kelp Bowl. This campaign also includes a partnership with Atlantic Sea Farms, which claims that its seaweed is regenerative to the ecosystem it grows in and that it helps pull carbon from the ocean and atmosphere.

This partnership could appeal to consumers looking to weave sustainable choices into their daily lives. Half (50%) of CPG growth between 2013 and 2018 was fueled by products marketed as sustainable, despite this category only reflecting 16% of the sector, per an NYU study.

By bringing on David Chang, an acclaimed chef known for founding the Momofuku restaurant group, Sweetgreen also may appeal to foodies that want to experience the chef's food at the reasonable prices offered by the QSR chain known for its grab-and-go salads. By having Chang star in the videos, the brand is tapping a celebrity chef who appears in a variety of media, including as the host of Netflix's nonfiction series "Ugly Delicious."