Viacom’s most notable invertebrate will soon appear on vegetable packages containing carrots, citrus fruits, and even green leafy spinach.
Nickelodeon has been working for the past year and a half, convincing fresh produce distributors to say “ola” to Dora the Explorer and the deep sea Krabby Patty folks from Bikini Bottom.
Next month, an assortment of vegetable and fruit packets will be finding their way to grocers’ shelves. SpongeBob will beam from bags of Boskovich Farms spinach. Dora and other characters will adorn Grimmway Farms carrots. The adorable puppy and her friends from Blue’s Clues have a spot on bags of citrus from LGS Specialty Sales.
This would be the most significant shift in marketing food to children since Sesame Street changed Cookie Monster’s signature song “C Is For Cookie” to “Cookie Is A Sometimes Food.”
“We’re thrilled to be able to add to the fun of eating fruits and vegetables,” said Sherice Torres, Vice President, Nickelodeon & Viacom Consumer Products.
Nick’s addition to healthy store items comes as the network continues its commitment to promoting good eating, wellness, and even to turn off the TV for a while. The network says in a press release that it has committed $20 million USD and 10 percent of its airtime to these positive messages.
The various public service announcements cross several of Nick’s properties, including its magazines and web sites. In one effort to boost its presence in a red-hot online advertising market, Viacom purchased child-favorite web site Neopets in June for a reputed $160 million.
Grocers have long made use of the impulse purchase activity driven by kids, from placing candy in checkout lanes to making people walk to the back of a store past numerous shelves of merchandise to get a container of lowfat milk; that milk might have Nick characters on its label in a month.
But with more people moving online, and billions of advertising dollars in play, Viacom seems to have made a shrewd, win-win move with its produce tie-in. Their brands get a lot more exposure, while containing a product that won’t have parents shrieking over its processed sugar content.
With brand reinforcement comes familiarity, and then an almost automatic desire to see those entertaining characters again. As SpongeBob’s cash-hungry boss Mr. Krabs might say, “money money money!”
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
