When did coffee brands get away from focusing on, you know, coffee?

That’s the question posed by Peet’s in its comical first campaign from Mischief, breaking this week, which pokes fun at the more insufferable coffee trends being embraced by rivals lately—everything from birthday-cake flavored beans to extra-dry triple berry infusions.

The campaign, themed “Coffee for Coffee People,” tells Peet’s story in part by emphasizing what the brand isn’t—a trend-chaser in an increasingly cartoony coffee world. This contrast is made clear in the first spot, where an annoyingly flaky couple is on the hunt for bizarre coffee flavors ... on a coffee farm.

Peet’s, which previously worked with Cutwater, hired Mischief in July.

Jessica Buttimer, VP of brand, came out of retirement last year to work for Peet’s (she left her last job, as a top global marketer at Sonos, in 2019). She told Ad Age that the brand has the history and credibility to take this kind of stand against fads in the industry and make some noise as the coffee lover’s coffee, really for the first time.

“It’s a sizable brand, but it’s also been a very quiet brand. We’ve grown through word of mouth and distribution and have never done a major campaign,” she said. “We pride ourselves on doing things differently, but I think that’s kind of been an insider story. The idea here was, the industry is at risk of losing the plot and we’re a big enough and important enough brand that we can make a shift in that behavior.”

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A second spot shows a mom ordering coffee for herself and her kids—but the orders are so ridiculously elaborate, it would be a shock if there were actually room for much coffee at all. (As in the first spot, the action here is stylized—the woman is ordering like she’s at a drive-through, though she appears to be in a Peet’s warehouse.) 

It is, at its core, an authenticity story. Those can often be boring, but Kevin Mulroy, executive creative director at Mischief, said the agency found themselves looking for a fun way in.

“We landed on this thought of, there are certain guitarists who are a guitarist’s guitarist—like Eddie Van Halen. Or writers who are a writer’s writer—like maybe Charlie Kaufman,” he said. “We felt like that’s what Peet’s is to the rest of the coffee industry. It’s coffee for people who genuinely love coffee, not for people who fill it with a bunch of stuff to take the coffee flavor away.” 

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Peet’s indeed put craft coffee on the map in the 1960s, and founder Alfred Peet even trained Starbucks’ founders on the art of roasting. Contrasting those bona fides with the modern cultural truth that the coffee world has gotten a bit silly felt like a good tension to explore.

“We’re tapping into something everybody is aware of and thinks is a little ridiculous, and we can create an enemy out of that in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s mean-spirited,” Mulroy said. “We can have fun with it, and everyone’s on board.” 

“As a small player in a category with these mega brands, we knew if we just told our story, it might not break through,” said Buttimer. “We couldn’t just stay focused on us. That’s part of the story, but we needed to tap into what’s happening more broadly—things people might know are silly, but they’re still participating in them. That kind of cultural hook was the way to get people’s attention.” 

Along with the :30s, there are shorter executions, including one set in a hotel room that seems to have a resident poltergeist.

Most provocatively, another spot is set in a hospital, where a woman arrives to see a loved one—but only after making her coffee run.

“That's my favorite spot—Kevin knows that,” said Buttimer. “The insight is so spot-on. The person who’s late for a meeting with their boss but they still walk in with their cup of coffee. That's what gets the head nod. So yes, it's an extreme example, but it's still a very true and real behavior.”

The shorter spots will be cut into six-second versions. “Hospital” is “maybe the best six we’ve ever done,” Mulroy said. “It’s such a dead simple truth—set-up, punchline and you're done. You get the whole story immediately. We feel like this platform does that really well, and we can execute against it for a long, long time.” 

The campaign is regional to start. The spots will air in four markets—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, D.C.—on Hulu, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Spotify and Amazon, supported by out-of-home executions. Those four markets comprise about 40% of Peet’s sales, Buttimer said; if all goes well, the plan is to do a national campaign next year.

Buttimer said the goal of the campaign is to boost brand familiarity and begin the process of conversion. (Peet’s has some 380 cafe locations in the U.S, China and the Middle East, and also has packaged products in more than 14,000 grocery stores across America.)

“We’ve already got broad, top-level brand awareness, but we know consumers need to know more about us to choose us in this category,” she said. “Competing with the likes of Starbucks and Dunkin’, it's not enough just to know the brand name, we have to say what makes us different. We're defining that as familiarity.” 

The brand will also be looking at engagement in social as well as website traffic, and will be offering sampling opportunities it’s never offered online before.

“We don't expect to see conversion impacted immediately, but what we hope to see is that people start trying [Peet’s],” Buttimer said. “If we see website traffic that then gets a sample opportunity, and they get into our data ecosystem as a result, that's a huge success for this first campaign. And of course, we'll always be looking at sales and conversion, but we know that takes time.”