D’Italiano is encouraging Canadians to embrace living life large, like Italians do, in the brand’s first campaign in three years.

Handled by Union, which began working on the brand earlier this year, the anthem spot for the new “Live Large” platform switches between showing things in Italy that are big and small, all to the tune of the Italian opera song, “La donna e mobile.” The spot ends on a shot of the whole family together, enjoying a meal complete with D’Italiano bread.

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Dentsu handled media on the campaign, which will feature 15- and 30-second spots on TV, video pre-roll and OOH. Andrea Hunt, VP of marketing at Weston Bakeries, says it is part of a comprehensive plan that will continue into 2017 with more digital work and recipe development.

D’Italiano’s last campaign was Match Marketing’s “Grill It Up” in 2013, anchored by a hip-hop music video featuring a family explaining how excited they are about barbecue season. Hunt says Weston brought a new campaign to the brand as part of an overall increase in marketing support for its brands. In addition to D’Italiano, the company also held competitive reviews for its Country Harvest and Wonder Bread brands this year, which were awarded to Union and Rethink, respectively, last month. New platforms for both of those brands are expected to debut early in 2017.

“This is a time when we’re stepping back and going on a transformational journey where we’re investing in brands, becoming a lot more demand-driven and consumer-focused,” Hunt says, adding the goal is to make the brands more relevant to consumers beyond just being a staple product. “You hear a lot about bread not being as relevant to consumers today as it has been, but it still has 99% penetration and it’s one of the most highly frequented categories, so we’re going to celebrate that a bit more.”

There aren’t many ways to differentiate a product in the white bread category, but the main thing that differentiates D’Italiano from other products – both in Weston’s own portfolio and in the category as a whole – is its size, with the loaf being bigger and sliced thicker than most other brands on store shelves. Hunt says consumers still respond well to the “healthy size” of the product, and the “Live Large” concept is combination of that with the insight that they also like to live passionately.

“We like to say that the brand is ‘unapologetically big,’ and living life large, as they do in Italy, is a great fit with how big a loaf of D’Italiano is,” she says. “Our consumers already know the brand doesn’t take itself too seriously, so we’ve still embodied that spirit and they’ve responded well to the boldness and unapologetic nature of the communication. It’s meant to be fun and celebrate living well, in the moment and celebrating what makes the brand different.”