Quaker has released a new, heartwarming online video, adding to the brand’s goal of supporting Canadian families as they face day-to-day challenges.
Created by Studio M, “Stay True” follows Shaelah, a single mom raising her daughter Ella and struggling to balance work, raising her daughter and following her dream of becoming a yoga teacher. Shaelah continues to worry about whether her daughter will resent taking time to pursue this dream, but when she goes to Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods park to lead her first yoga class, Ella is leading a huge group of participants, who she brought together herself.
[iframe_youtube video = “R6xTd14v2o8”]
OMD handled the media buy with Citizen Relations on PR support.
Mangala D’Sa, senior director of marketing for Quaker at PepsiCo Foods Canada, says the goals for the video are the same as “The Recital,” a digital documentary-style video it released last summer: show that Quaker is a brand that supports and understands Canadian families.
“One of the big learnings from last year was that parents are constantly questioning the decisions they make,” D’Sa. “They get inundated with information, especially when it comes to food and nutrition. The beauty of ‘Recital’ is that it championed the confidence parents can find. We took that one step further by showing the idea that staying true to what matters to them is what will help parents make the best decisions for both themselves and their families.”
Aside from a few brief shots of Shaelah and Ella eating, Quaker products play a relatively small role in “Stay True.” The idea behind the video is to take more of a masterbrand approach and drive Quaker’s brand values in a way it can’t always do in more product-focused campaigns.
“It’s not about pushing oatmeal or granola bars, it’s about the greater brand promise around Quaker,” D’Sa says. “It’s driving affinity and showing families how Quaker plays a valuable role in their life. That helps to drive consideration for Quaker everyday, in every category, whether it’s for breakfast or snacking.”
Like last year, the video is being shared exclusively online, primarily through Facebook and YouTube, promoting it through social channels and influencers. Quaker is also working with a company called Zephyr that targets ads based on a consumer’s mindset, which it determines based on the searches they are making. For example, someone looking for “feel-good” videos like “Stay True” are probably also looking for things like cute animal videos.
D’Sa says an online format is better-suited for a masterbrand approach, as it gives Quaker more flexibility to tell the kinds of longer-form stories, as opposed to standard TV spots and pre-roll ads, which tend to be more tactical and direct.
“We can tell a broader story online and really drive that connection between our brand’s values and our consumer’s values,” she says. “In a commercial, we spend most of the limited amount of time we have talking about the product benefits, and the brand is almost there to reinforce them. In our online channels, we really have the space to showcase what Quaker’s brand values are.”
