Wholly Veggie Turns Healthy Eating Trickery into a Heavy Metal Anthem for First-Ever Campaign

Wholly Veggie has been shaking up the plant-based frozen food aisle since its inception in 2017, making vegetables fun, delicious and accessible with its plant-based mozzarella style sticks, cauliflower wings, entrées and more. In true Wholly Veggie fashion, the frozen vegetable pioneer is breaking category conventions once again with the launch of its first creative campaign, 'Haha You Just Ate Vegetables.'  

Created by independent creative agency Party Land, 'Haha You Just Ate Vegetables' transforms the time-honoured tradition of tricking your family into eating healthy into an unforgettable heavy metal anthem. The playful campaign features three :30 TV spots that depict families tricking the picky eaters in their life into eating vegetables by serving Wholly Veggie’s delicious plant-based snacks, including Wholly Veggie Cauliflower Wings, Mozzarella Style Sticks, and Sweet Potato Popcorn. None the wiser, the veggie haters enjoy the plant-based snacks until their family, delighted by the victory, smugly reveals the truth – haha, they just ate vegetables. The song, which serves as narration for the spots which include actors without spoken dialogue, was written, composed (including vocals and instrumental) and performed by Party Land creatives, Matt Heath and Matt Rogers. The songs are available on Spotify and in Instagram and TikTok libraries to add to content and storylines. 

“The Wholly Veggie brand has always been a bit subversive, and we wanted our advertising to be, too. The team at Party Land understood that and brought us an idea that takes an old food advertising trope – attempting to get your family to eat healthy – and turns it into something completely unexpected and incredibly memorable,” said John Bonnell, co-founder, Wholly Veggie. “Much like Wholly Veggie is reinventing the frozen food space, this campaign breaks the mould of what traditional healthy food advertising looks like. Our goal is to stand out in a sea-of-sameness frozen food category and let people know what our brand is all about, and we believe this campaign really delivers on that.”  

This campaign comes on the heels of a big year for Wholly Veggie, which announced distribution of its award-winning Mozzarella Style Cheese Sticks at 705 Target locations in  October, also adding Whole Foods, Sprouts, Fresh Thyme, and Wegmans. This takes the brand’s added distribution into 6,500 stores across Canada and US by the end of this year. 

“Wholly Veggie makes plant-based food that’s fun to eat. Hiding the healthy in traditionally non-healthy snack foods was really all we needed to go on for the campaign. They came to us wanting to do something really different for the category, so…we did what we do. Matt Rogers and I are both ex-musicians, so it was personally really fun to get back into a recording studio to write and record those songs – as ridiculous as they are,” said Matt Heath, co-founder and chief creative officer, Party Land.  

The campaign is airing on connected TV, social, and digital across major markets in the US and Canada, and will continue to roll-out into 2023, with punctuations around January health and wellness and Super Bowl entertaining.  

Wholly Veggie was founded when two former organic meat execs - John Bonnell and David Gaucher - saw the vegetable was ripe for disruption. They were inspired to create a frozen product line that celebrates the vegetable and all of its goodness. Together, they set out to create feel-good restaurant-style dishes that help people benefit from an array of vegetables, while still tasting downright amazing.