This Vegan Snack Brand’s Brilliant Outdoor Campaign Goes Viral During Lockdown

Vegan snack brand EMILY has changed its marketing campaign in reaction to the Covid-19 lockdown and it was an excellent move.  

After realising that not many people would see its first outdoor campaign, the brand had to find ways to make the situation work for their advantage. And it found a solution - honesty and good sense of humour. Turning the campaign around and making fun of its own misfortune. 

The ads feature tongue-in-cheek humour such as “Our first ever poster, seen by a runner and one pigeon. Typical” and “Hmmm… Maybe we should have made a TV ad instead”, alongside colourful images of their unique Sweet Potato Veg Sticks and the brand message “Eat Bold”.

The campaign has been running for a week from the 15th April on digital six-sheets across the UK. EMILY has been sharing photos of the outdoor ads on social media with the #stayhome hashtag.

Humorous ads caught the attention of key workers who walked through the cities during the lockdown. 

Despite the lack of people on the streets, the campaign became popular on social media. Brand’s posts on Instagram are getting thousands of views, likes, comments and shares. 

One fan commented: "Brilliant. Next time I go shops I’ll make sure I grab a bag." 

 Another one added: "Excellent campaign."

Another one wrote: "Genius marketing." 

Nurture Brands, which owns Emily Crisps bought outdoor media space in December 2019, thinking April would be the perfect time to run its first outdoor advertising campaign.

The team had envisioned a sunny springtime season with people out and about in parks, barbecuing and eating lots of crisps.

The circumstances changed very fast, and during the first days of lockdown, the brand quickly realised the reality was going to be very different, and the campaign wouldn’t be seen by many consumers at all. The marketing team had to move quickly to turn around for new ads calling out their marketing misfortune.

“We booked the outdoor media for EMILY back in 2019, so this was not something we could simply cancel at late notice. Luckily, the EMILY brand is all about being bold, so we decided to be totally transparent and use this as an opportunity to poke fun at ourselves” says Ben Arbib, Founder of Nurture Brands. 

“We’ll be sharing photos of the outdoor ads on social media with #stayhome as, unusually, we don’t want consumers to see them in person.”

Emily is a premium, natural, real veg and fruit snacking brand, made for those who want to ‘Ditch Dull, Eat Bold’ with a range of Sweet Potato Veg Sticks, Veg Crisps, new Veg Thins and Apple Crisps. In March 2019 EMILY became part of the Nurture Brands family.

Ben Arbib founded Nurture Brands in March 2019 with the ambition of becoming the UK’s leading plant-based snack and beverage business. It now boasts a portfolio of four high-growth and award-winning brands: Rebel Kitchen, EMILY, Ape and, most recently, The Primal Pantry.

The team at Nurture Brands behind EMILY are going to encourage their consumers to ‘Ditch Dull, Eat Bold’ with the originally planned campaign going live across the UK once the lockdown has been lifted.