After weeks of tears, embarrassing auditions and several groups being formed ditched and then reformed - winter finally arrived on Saturday night with the first of the X Factor live shows. There was much to discuss about this weekend’s extravaganza, but perhaps one of the most interesting things is that for the second year running, dairy Brand Yeo Valley has decided to launch a new advert for its yoghurt that runs only during the show’s ad breaks. Last year, Yeo Valley focused on rapping famers, this year they debuted a new dairy themed boy band “The Churned”. Whilst the genre has changed, the premise remains similar, as the ad plays out like a music video with songs that are downloadable online.
While using the same approach and channels to those from last year isn’t unusual (particularly if it had a positive impact on sales), what is interesting about this year is that Muller decided to launch a ‘rage against the machine’ style battle for best yoghurt advert during the first X Factor live show. Muller’s tact is slightly different in that they are not solely committing their TV campaign to the two hours a week that Gary and co rate or slate wannabe pop stars. Furthermore, their ad employs cartoon characters like Yogi Bear and the cast of the Mr Men – so doesn’t link itself to the show’s content by using a music theme. Muller even utilised advertisements in national press titles like The Times to direct people to the launch of their new advert with ads stating ‘at 8.50pm on ITV1 Something wunderful will happen’.
It isn’t the first time advertisers have launched campaigns with extended spot lengths in a bid to stand out from their competitors – in fact; the approach seems to be something of a trend. Of course, The X-Factor is going to be the most watched programme for anyone purchasing pretty much anything, whether it is mobile phones, pizzas or shampoo and some have argued that the Muller clip was more of a Yeo Valley than an attempt at creating an affinity with the show. But both campaigns have already generated publicity with features in The Drum, The Grocer and The Guardian, so the message is certainly getting out there.
MEC opinion: This focus on The X Factor prompts questions about why is ITV’s talent show so important for yogurt brands. TGI data does suggest that 35.7% of people who eat yogurt more than once a day specifically choose to watch The X Factor and that these heavy yogurt users are 18.3% more likely than the average adult to choose to watch the programme. Therefore there seems to be a strong affinity between yogurt and The X Factor but which yogurt will the viewer’s favour, according to TGI there is the most natural link between Muller and the ITV1 reality show with people who specifically watch the programme being 20.4% more likely than the average adult to eat Muller most often whereas X Factor viewers are less likely than the average adult to show a preference to Yeo Valley.
However perhaps this doesn’t matter and a good advert will encourage X Factor viewers to try Yeo Valley and next year X Factor viewers will over-index against the group behind the organic big pot, from seeing Facebook posts by friends relating to the musical famers it does at least seem that Yeo Valle’s advert has prompted conversation whereas I did not see similar posts about the Muller advert.
Although it is too early to see whether these adverts will be as successful as One Direction or flop spectacularly like Leon Jackson (he won series 4 in case you were wondering) this approach to advertising provides lots of questions such as; does focusing on a sole TV event work for brands? Are there types of brands that this works for and others that don’t? And if you want to sell yogurt is The X Factor this place to do it?
