Back in March, Organic Valley appointed Chattanooga-based brand invention agency Humanaut as its lead creative agency. The next month Humanaut explored breakfast habits for the brand with its “Real Morning Report” and then opened up the Organic Valley Coffee Shop in Manhattan a month after that.
Now the agency is back, declaring that “The War on Butter is Over!” in a new online spot for the brand, ahead of prime holiday baking season. The ad opens with a tongue-in-cheek look back at butter’s place in history. Then the narrator takes a look back at the 1950s, when scientists decided that butter was unhealthy and that chemical sprays and margarine were a more acceptable substitute. As with a lot of other assumptions made during that period, we’ve since learned better and Humanut has decided that the decades long “War on Butter” is now officially over. To honor the occasion, the spot invites viewers to nominate heroes on the dairy product’s side to be immortalized with a butter sculpture.
While there’s nary a bro in sight, the comical approach of the ad harkens back to the agency’s “Save the Bros” mock PSA promoting the brands Organic Fuel protein shake which likely helped the agency secure the account. A shot of a farmer biting into a stick of butter and declaring it “tastes like victory” especially harkens back to that effort. The timing of the spot, arriving ahead of the myriad baked goods associated with the fall and winter holidays, means viewers may share it along with such recipes (and avoid ones that turn to olive oil over butter).
“As a little guy, we want to tell a unique story, something different than a big consumer packaged goods company would do,” Organic Valley vice president, marketing Lewis Goldstein told Adweek. “We take a bit of a gamble each time we do something like this, but our consumers seem to like the humor.”