Quite some time ago, Laura McD. sent us a link to an NPR story about a new ad campaign for baby carrots (which, if you didn’t know, aren’t actually immature carrots; they’re just regular carrots peeled and cut into small pieces). In an effort to appeal to teens, these ads openly satirize marketing tropes used to sell lots of snacks, especially the effort to market junk food as totally extreme! The website self-consciously makes the link to junk food, winking at the audience about the absurdity of EXTREEEEEME!!!!! marketing, yet hoping that rebranding carrots as similar to junk food, and using the marketing tactics they’re laughing at, actually increases sales. So, for instance, they have new packaging that looks like bags of chips:
The ads serve as a great primer on extreme food marketing cliches, complete with associations with violence (and stupidity), the sexualization of women, and the constant reminder via voiceovers and pounding music that this food is freakin’ extreme, ok?!?!
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This one parodies ads that sexualize both women and food and present eating as an indulgence for women:
The ad campaign presents all this with a tongue-in-cheek tone of “isn’t this ridiculous?” But they’re also genuinely trying to rebrand a food product to increase sales, and clearly see the way to do that as downplaying any claims about health and instead using — if mockingly — the same marketing messages advertisers use to sell soda, chips, energy drinks, and other foods aimed at teens (particularly, though not only, teen boys).
As such, they provide a great summary of these marketing techniques and the jesting “Ha ha! We get it! We’re not like the other marketers who try to sell stuff to you! We know this is silly! (Please buy our product, though)” ironic marketing technique.
And now, I highly recommend you go watch the satire of energy drink commercials Lisa posted way back in 2007. It never gets old.
Comments 13
Thomas Gokey — July 6, 2011
These ads are, in my view, pretty awesome. I hope they succeed. But you do a good job of pointing out the many paradoxes that arise when you want to change society.
In many ways what we need is a total change of society. Wouldn't it be nice if appealing to the healthiness of carrots made a well informed and educated public want to increase the amount of healthy food in their diet? But in order to do that we'd have to change much more than the way people perceive carrots, we'd have to change the way people perceive everything. It's a bit of a trap. In order to change anything what we need is to change everything.
So we want to rebrand health food. How? By dressing it up like junk food, by making sexist and semi-violent ads aimed very clearly at teenage boys.
This is a problem that White Supremacist-Capitalist-Patriarchy (to use bell hooks combo-term that I like so much) doesn't have. These three things re-enforce one another. To challenge one of them often means compromising or selling out in one way to the others, which ends up splintering and undermining other worthy activism.
Sexism = "cool" so and we want to make carrots cool so lets wrap it up in sexism. BUT sexism is bad so we should seek to defuse it's operation. BUT if we were to 100% succeed in doing so then carrots would go back to being just health food and people don't like health food for its own sake.
How do we make health food more attractive? By making it sexist. Are we really changing the world by elevating people's health consciousness or at least changing their eating behavior, or is the health food message sinking down to the level of sexism? It feels like amending a horrible piece of legislation with something that does real good, like adding some money for community health clinics to a "must pass" war funding bill or something.
I'm willing to grant these types of ads a heavy dose of grace that I wouldn't grant to other types of ads. And their clearly sarcastic tone does, to a small degree, undermine the overt sexism and violence (but only to a small degree).
Diavola — July 6, 2011
Also see the U by Kotex brand of ads.
Tom — July 6, 2011
It's a great campaign. The one with the carrot gun made my six-year-old son laugh, and then he asked for carrots in his lunch so he could repeat the jokes with his friends.
Mission accomplished.
EMB — July 6, 2011
Do they really "downplay" claims about health? I think they assume you already know that carrots are healthy, and the point of the ads is just to remind you that "baby" carrots actually do work pretty well as snack food despite being healthy (and do so in a humorous, and hence hopefully memorable, way).
redscare47 — July 6, 2011
Wow that youtube video about the making of baby carrots is depressing. So much of the carrot is wasted when it's shaved down to make baby carrots. It's interesting that so much advertising for vegetables goes into creating the sense that your veggies come from bucolic, old-fashioned farms rather than big factories, yet this video is so straight-up about it. It seems almost 1950s in a way. I think I'll be growing my own baby carrots next year--these round ones look cute and delicious: http://www.seedsavers.org/Details.aspx?itemNo=1507
Whimzy — July 6, 2011
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm tempted to eat baby carrots now, from the packaging alone.
But it's because I wish I could get snack packs of baby carrots, damn it. But they usually come in some cold plastic bag which is soaking wet on the inside. If only these people could come up with some method of keeping carrots dry in packaging, my life would be changed forever...
Baby Carrots are EXTREME, Dude! » Sociological Images | Baby Images — July 6, 2011
[...] from: Baby Carrots are EXTREME, Dude! » Sociological Images Posted in ad, all, Am, an, and, at, baby, By, Ed, el, for, go, i, in, it, la, Le, MC, Me, new, St, [...]
Eat ‘em like Junk Food « Another Roofless Town — July 6, 2011
[...] Win for advertisement [...]
Another Jack — July 6, 2011
Ha! These ads were hilarious! In an ironic way, or at least until baby carrots start being vilified for being full of sugars and carbs and processed, Gaia have mercy, unlike the raw organic local kale your betters think you ought to be eating.
whatafy — July 8, 2011
Baby carrots are the best thing! yum
Miss Disco — July 9, 2011
For some reasons i lolled the most at 'chic'
Taylortimevlog — July 20, 2011
I just did a vlog on baby carrots and the controversy around them. Check it out if you'd like: http://web.me.com/taylormadetalent/Taylor_Baldwin/Blog/Entries/2011/7/20_The_Truth_About_a_Popular_Vegetable_Revealed_-_and,_a_Long-Lasting_Natural_Deodorant_that_Really_Works!.html