Weetabix – Becoming Relevant Again

Last weekend Weetabix launched a new advertising campaign. To my mind, Weetabix is far from an exciting brand. If anything, it is old fashioned, out dated and well, far from relevant.

Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show fame, really summed it up for me when he said:

“To the NATO Allies that we met. The troops from the other countries that were there. That give so much. Your service is much appreciated. But that is no excuse to introduce Weetabix to our troops. I’m Sorry. That is not a breakfast. That is a building material.”

They are working hard to change that image. With help of their agency, London based BBH, they have grabbed many opportunities that the online world offers to ensure this ad has a life beyond the square box.

First the ad itself. It’s about a 9 year old girl, clearly so excited by her new breakfast itual that she does a dance routine which would have made Michael Jackson blush. Oh, and there are stuffed teddy bears break dancing too (why wouldn’t there be).

Of course a branded YouTube channel was launched. Yawn, right? Wrong. The content hosted on this channel is actually very good. Behind the scenes are becoming best practice, but the step by step break down of all the dance moves is very clever.

People love imitating content they like (for example, or this) .  By providing a step by step tutorial they have made it incredibly easy for people to learn the dance moves. Expect imitation videos to start hitting YouTube pages near you soon!

The other aspect I liked was the involvement from the agency. Whilst the ad was airing, people from the agency were monitoring Twitter for reactions and retweeting people talking about the ad.

It could be argued this is spammy and these tweets are entirely self serving. And that may partially be true. A retweet is not entirely engaging. Perhaps the client should have done this with their Twitter account, rather than the agency.

However, the fact they are paying attention to what people are saying about the brand and that is a definite step in the right direction.

Our first advice to clients is to start listening first. Weetabix and BBH London clearly are. Now let’s see those moves!