Top 5 food and beverage marketing ideas you need to know about now

Ad Age expanded its "Creativity Top 5" series to include new roundups of our favorite special-interest campaigns and ideas from brands. This week we look at some new ideas, and creative solutions, from food and beverage brands. Visit our site each Thursday for a new ranking of campaigns from the past month. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here No. 5. A cleaner, greener wiener July 20 was National Hot Dog Day, and one way Hormel Foods’ natural meat-focused Applegate division celebrated was by reimagining one of the category's enduring (but also kind of yucky) symbols: streetside hot dog vendor carts. They're famous for “dirty water dogs,” but are also fueled by noisy and eco-unfriendly generators and propane. Applegate partnered with three New York vendors to enhance the tiny take-out restaurants on wheels, replacing propane and generators with a greener 100% battery-operated heating system, and invited other vendors nationwide to apply for additional partnerships. The stunt supports Applegate’s new Do Good Dog brand, which it promotes as “the first nationally available hot dog made with beef raised with practices that regenerate the land.” 4. Oreo takes a dip Have it your way. Ever since Burger King first said it, and probably long before that, food brands that can help consumers eat what they want, how they want have harnessed the message. Arguably, it’s even more powerful today amid excitement around restaurants with “secret menus” and consumers with creative “food hacks” or odd “menu hacks” populating social media. A new campaign from Mondelez’s Oreo cookie brand and Digitas U.K. takes in all that, and then it gets weird. It shows Oreos dipping into almost anything that can be eaten or drunk. Like Marmite. Or mustard. Or orange juice. Or pizza. 3. Taste you can smell In a literal sense, we taste with our mouths. And in a figurative sense, it’s also often said we taste with our eyes. And technically, we also taste with our noses. Why not then design a system for all three? That’s what a company called Air Up said it has been doing to much success in its native Germany since 2019, and its invention is now available in the U.S. The product is a reusable bottle, designed around a system of scented flavor pods that snap onto its lid, and a bottle shape that facilitates a way to turn ordinary water (or seltzer) into the sensation of flavored water as the user sips—only, without the calories, sugars and ingredients pre-flavored beverages may also include. The pods last for what the company says is about a gallon's worth of scented drinking. The system (available online starting at $39.99 for a starter-kit bottle and $7.99 for a 3-pack of replacement scent pods that come in a variety of flavors, or more technically, aromas) is supported by a campaign from agencies Tres Bien (creative) and Derris (communications) that launched online last month. See America's Hottest Brands 20 brands that are having a moment Click here 2. Coors Light’s bright idea It’s no secret that popular athletes like star NFL quarterbacks can help sell products. But due to NFL rules, active players have never been able to make direct endorsements for beer. That didn’t stop Coors Light from recruiting Patrick Mahomes to appear in a spot promoting the “Coors Light”—not a beer, but a flashlight that still seems quite beer-like. The video, running on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and other digital channels, was created for the Molson Coors brand by agency Mischief. 1. Smoke signals on Spotify Like Mahomes and Coors Light, Ceria, a beer brewed with THC, also found a creative way to advertise a difficult-to-advertise product. Only, it did it in song. A campaign from Mother for the microbrewed beer, which has no alcohol but instead, the ingredient from pot that makes you high, is prohibited in states such as California, to actually present itself as a beer. But there’s no specific rule against making a playlist on Spotify, putting its scan code on a billboard, and letting consumers then discover the playlist. And if they happen not just to listen to the songs, but also read the song titles sequentially ... Let’s just say although it’s not on the Ceria playlist, the John Prine classic “Illegal Smile” is available to stream on Spotify, too.

Top 5 food and beverage marketing ideas you need to know about now

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