Want to advertise healthy ‘bland’ food to kids?
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This project was developed from my dissertation project, where I set the brief of trying to advertise healthy food with to children under 10. My research had found that most healthy foods in the UK were marketed to parents, highlighting the health benefits and nutritional value where foods that were high in sugar, fats and salts would advertise to children with anthropomorphism and story telling. After researching the history of advertising for Cocoa Pops it was clear to see the strategies that got children to want to be involved, which the campaign by Veg Power “Eat them to defeat them” used extremely well and integrated this into schools to educate children further.
I followed this by researching how advergames influence young people by actively getting them involved and can be used to portray a brand’s core values. This was when I discovered the Chipotle Scarecrow game, which looked to advertise Chipotle’s core values to ‘Cultivate a better world’, by making reference to other food businesses that use factory farming and other unethical food sources to produce food, while putting Chipotle as the hero in the world that is trying to make a difference.
This is what inspired my designs for OatieBrek.
Why Oatie?
I wanted to take this startegy and apply it to advertise porridge to children under 10, to show them the importance of making healthy food choices and how to make porridge that is tasty to their individual tastes.
The Project
To do this, I took the orignal narrative of Goldilocks & the three bears as it is a classic tale from childhood, and spun it to have a ‘Calvin & Hobbes comic strip’ perspective where Goldie takes on the role of Calvin, and Oatie bear is her best friend taking on the role of Hobbes. Hobbes is a normal bear to everyone except Goldie.
I then designed the character’s to resemble the original tale but with a contemporary twist, using big eyes and bubble bodies to replicate the cartoon styles that are currently popular. I also added quirks to show their personality and connection. I then created a brief narrative for the advertisement which would be shown on TV, and screenshots of how the advergame could look.
After it was clear what the narrative for the story was, I was then able to develop the name and branding, Oatie Brek. This took reference for the perfect porridge from Goldilocks, which Goldilocks & baby bear would say is ‘just right’. I then used this with reference to various porridge toppings to create the packaging.
