Halo Top is taking a cue from brands it unseated in grocery
stores, such as Ben & Jerry's and Haagen Dazs, and opening its
first shop. The brand, which rose to the top spot in U.S. grocery
stores this year, is opening a Scoop Shop at Westfield Topanga mall
in California. It will serve some of the low-calorie, high-protein
ice cream it sells in pints, plus its new soft-serve, ice cream
sandwiches made with vegan cookies, cones including something
called a "puffle" cone, and ice cream tacos. No word yet on whether
that woman from
the creepy commercial will make an appearance at the Nov. 15
grand opening.
Pampers introduces diaper, ad for World Prematurity
Day
Procter & Gamble's Pampers is coming out with a flat diaper for
premature babies too delicate even for existing preemie products,
including babies with extremely low birth weight, severe skin
issues, jaundice and gastrointestinal complications. The effort, in
which P&G is working with March of Dimes, includes a new ad
from Saatchi & Saatchi, including a version of
"Fight Song" by Rachel Platten (It replaced an earlier version
featuring the Rocky classic "Eye of the Tiger," all to the end of
celebrating "the littlest fighters").
Sleep on it
After helping to "disrupt" the mattress industry, startup Casper,
which was one of the bed-in-a-box ecommerce pioneers when it
debuted four years ago, is trying to turn heads again. The New
York-based company is publishing a print magazine, called Woolly,
that covers wellness and modern life, including sleep. (Casper had
been publishing a digital magazine, Van Winkle's, for the last two
years but that product is now dissolved.) Costing $12 per issue,
Woolly will be published "quarterly," which really means whenever
it wants, according to a company fact sheet. "This is Woolly. It's
a print magazine published by a mattress. Come on, you know it's
not the weirdest thing to happen in 2017," read a letter
accompanying the inaugural 96-page issue. Ain't that the truth.
(Come see Casper speak at Ad Age Next, our biggest event of the
year, taking place Nov. 15 and 16 in New York. Check out
the full Next agenda.)
Joy to Big Lots
Big Lots, the discount retailer known for "nailing it" in its sassy
musical ensembles of holidays past, is going for a more heartfelt
December with its new campaign from Chicago-based OKRP, the first
in recent years without chief customer officer Andrew Stein
(formerly of Ship Your Pants Kmart fame) who parted ways with the
company earlier this year. A 60-second digital spot shows
traditional carolers crooning "Joy to the World," before the video
shifts to shoppers making cookies and hanging lights in formats
designed to emulate user-generated social content. In fact, half of
the participants in the clip are actors, the others are real
customers. Big Lots will air 15-and-30-second broadcast spots as
well. Media Storm handled media duties. Stein has
yet to be replaced.
Would You Buy This?