How Marmite Broke the Food Category… Again
Marmite - “A sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, salty, powerful flavour and heady aroma,” according to Wikipedia - has been a point of contention within British culture and beyond ever since its creation. Its life-long tagline - “Love it or hate it” - reflects the contrasting opinions of the debate. But, that has never stopped the brand from being unapologetically itself and celebrating what Marmite really stands for.
Lena Portchmouth, marketing manager at Unilever for the Marmite brand, reminds us that the spread has a well-known track record of breaking conventions in food advertising. “We have explored the worlds of gene testing, pre-natal scans, hypnosis, and rescue documentaries.” Indeed, when you have such a distinctively divisive brand the perhaps only creatively smart thing to do is play on it.
“Why do some love it and why do some hate it?" The age-old question.
This time, though, Marmite doesn’t ask why - it just tells you to “Get it on” in its new electro anthem targeting young adults between the ages of 18 and 24. In a YouGov research poll, the brand discovered that exactly this age group is most likely to have never tried the salty spread. The revelation coincided with this year’s Freshers’ Week - a time fueled by experimentation and… trying new things.
So, as the stars aligned, Marmite collaborated with Freshers everywhere, and with the help of adam&eveDDB, Smuggler, and two hilariously suggestive puppets, who told them to try the spread for the first time.
The two puppet protagonists in the musical campaign, built and operated by Puppets Magic Studio, didn’t just encourage first timers to give Marmite a go, but also quite clearly explained how it ought to be consumed. Should it be on toast, a thin layer is all you need. This was important, as a key insight from the brand’s own research revealed that many people (often in the hating camp) simply don’t know how to use the spread.
“How much to use, what to eat it on, butter or no butter. These questions offered us two great opportunities,” says Lena. “The first, to show those who had been eating Marmite ‘wrong’ and subsequently hating it, how to spread it correctly for the perfect slice of Marmite on toast. The second, to educate 18-to-24-year-olds on how to get it right the first time, so they can learn to love it.” Surprisingly, the question of “How much is too much?” isn’t one that the brand has tackled before, but this campaign revealed itself as the perfect opportunity to address common misconceptions.
She continues: “Young people doing their first uni shops, branching out during a notoriously experimentative time - Freshers week did, and still does, feel like the perfect opportunity to encourage youngsters to find out if they are lovers or haters, both from a campaign and brand perspective.”
But, because of the target audience, the creative of course needed to ‘feel’ young too, as well as different to the campaigns done before - which proves hard when considering the creative scope of the Marmite brand, as mentioned earlier. “While Freshers’ week didn’t guide our creative approach, it definitely made us try to tap into what young people and those attending university might see as engaging.” Not only did the catchy tune push the already curious freshers towards discovery, but reminded already existing lovers to grab a slice.
In comes adam&eveDDB, whose task was to find ways to encourage young people to try and show the correct way of enjoyment, to avoid first-timer’s trauma - and do it in a ‘hip’ way. “We started out exploring different types of awkward retro children’s educational films,” the team says. “As the idea evolved, we decided that making it in the style of a music video would be more engaging and allow us to get away with a bit more.”
“A bit more” in this case means including puppets, which found their way into the project along its production process. “We started to feel like human actors would make our approach too X-rated for a family brand,” says the team at adam&eveDDB, “Puppets make it instantly more light-hearted.”
Lena explains that Marmite’s wish was to aim for humour, not crudeness, so the idea of utilising puppetry came naturally, as it allowed the production to dial up the comedy without entering uncomfortable territory. “I think the beauty of using puppets instead of people is that the ambiguity left room for individual imagination,” she says and reveals that other furry mascots might make their way into future campaigns too. “Charlie and Madonna (the two puppets in the newest film) have already started making TikTok content for the brand.”
Ambiguity was important with the way the puppets looked and what they represented too - the team at Puppet Magic Studio says that this served as their starting point of character building. “We needed to create two characters that were neither human, nor animal, and that didn’t overtly represent any one specific group of people,” they explain.
The characters needed to feel ‘homemade’ as well. From this jumping point, several rounds of 2D sketching and a playful phase of testing shapes and colour variations followed, but it became clear that the designs needed to stay simple and not too contrived. While this was crucial for the message the puppets were meant to convey, it was one of the biggest challenges in the production process. “We had to hold back some of our natural model maker instincts to give them that ‘professional finish’ and instead embrace crude seam lines and the naivety of the materials,” says the team at PMS.
“The best part was creating the hand-stitched little heart tattoo on the smaller puppet’s arm though - you have to look closely but it’s the small details that can be really fun to play with,” the team adds.
Smuggler’s Guy Shelmerdine, the director of the campaign, agrees that simplicity and naivety were what helped dial up the humour in the film, while avoiding tackiness and inappropriate moments.
Puppet Magic Studio’s team says that as the campaign’s target was mainly gen z, the characters had to keep their cool, while not being confined to an ethnicity, subculture, or group of people. “We chose the grayscale colour scheme for their main skin. The puppets also were made in different sizes to complement each other. The larger grey puppet had globe hands that they could fully articulate and pick up the Marmite jar with, whilst the smaller cream puppet had arms on wire rods, for cruder movement.”
Guy says that clothing was also a big part of the character building and design process - “We sourced clothing in small sizes and had various wardrobe fittings with the two characters.”
And when it came to the little puppets interacting with the Marmite itself - things got tricky. The spread being both very sticky and black was perhaps the worst combination with cream and grey fabrics, admits the director. “To overcome this, for certain shots (like the licking of the finger) we tested resins and other materials in pre-production that gave the appearance of Marmite, without sticking to the puppets.” You heard it here first - no puppets were harmed in this production.
Overall, from the time of initial sketching to the final build, the puppets took about four weeks to create - the characters were sculpted in foam and then hand stitched by the team of artists. And when it comes to the track - adam&eveDDB reveal that they found it before they shot the film! “It seemed perfect as soon as we heard it,” they say. “An amazing track that would be brilliant to edit too and with easily adaptable lyrics.”
It seems that Marmite isn’t only empowering strong opinions, but is also still on track of empowering the food category’s creative revolution. “It takes a lot of bravery to speak openly about a product, never mind publicising any negativity,” says Lena about the brand’s history of embracing its haters.
“However, there is something powerful in speaking truthfully, and the simple truth is that Marmite is a divisive spread,” she continues. “The very nature of the product is that it’s a yeast extract with distinctive, salty, powerful flavour and matching heady aroma, which is not going to be universally liked by everyone.” The campaign, Lena explains, importantly also implied that a big part of the hating group might not have had Marmite the ‘right’ way.
“Being able to bucket our consumers into either category has allowed us to always add an element of challenge to our campaigns, daring the haters to try Marmite again the correct way, and subsequently become lovers. We are a daring brand, with a daring taste, made for those who dare to eat it, and we use this in our creative work.” So… Do you dare?
