On Super Bowl Sunday, in many family households with children, there will be a crudité platter filled with carrot sticks, broccoli florets and cherry tomatoes, placed side by side with typical football fare like BBQ chicken wings and mugs of beer.
The dip for the veggies—and wings—will likely be a favorite: ranch dressing. Hidden Valley Ranch knows it and is playing up that role in a new video as a way to get kids to each more veggies and for adults to just enjoy the taste as part of the Big Game on Feb. 1 and beyond.
In its first foray into entertainment marketing, the video, “It’s Sunday Night,” debuted this week and pokes fun at the vast divide on Super Bowl Sunday between parents attempting to watch the game with young children running around and those attending an all-adult party. In the video, the parents are aware of a party across the street, but they have not been invited. That is until they get a call that the neighbor throwing the party has run out of ranch dressing. (Watch the video).
The Hidden Valley brand worked with SheKnows, a women’s media lifestyle company to sponsor the video produced by the Holderness Family around the excitement of Super Bowl XLIX. The idea was to make its Ranch Dressing the hero of the video and the key to entrance to a real Super Bowl party.
“We have been embarking on the brand doing more and more video and digital as we think about where are consumers are,” Julia Ponce, Hidden Valley associate marketing director, says.
The video is being distributed across the SheKnows network—84.5 million predominantly female unique visitors per month, according to comScore— including blogher.com, sheknows.com and stylecaster.com, as well as Holderness’ YouTube and social channels.
“Their brands really resonate with our audience, moms, and the tone they employ in speaking to consumers—friendly and accessible but not taking themselves to seriously,” says Samantha Skey, CMO at SheKnows. “There has to be pretty good trust between the content producer and the sponsoring brand and the brand has to go out on a limb a little bit.”
In addition to “It’s Sunday Night,” Hidden Valley, over the last few years, has been increasing its investment in digital and video, producing content around incorporating its products in recipes, Ponce says.
Over the last few weeks, the brand posted “15 Second Kitchen” clips on YouTube and on HiddenValley.com featuring recipes like Ranch Fried Chicken and Ranch Tartar Sauce Dip—all recipes that would delight Big Game viewers. Over the coming months, the clips will also be seeded on Pinterest and Facebook.
“The idea is see how they do and if they’re well received we’ll keep up a regular cadence of them,” Ponce says. “We’re hoping consumers will be inspired to use Hidden Valley in ways they haven’t thought of.”
Another new video for the brand, “Do You Really #LoveYourVeggies?” posted on HiddenValley.com takes on the man-on-the-street style. In it, award-winning author and Bobblehead Dad, Jim Higley, is seen running through the streets of Chicago waving heads of broccoli and stalks of Brussels sprouts stopping the old and young to ask, “How often do you eat your vegetables?” and other veggie related questions, like, “If you had to name one of your children after a vegetable, what would it be?” The veggie confessions are humorous and entertaining and the Hidden Valley Ranch brand begins to appear in some of the answers.
I think we’ll have to see how this one goes,” Ponce says. “It’s different for us and we’re excited about it and we’ll see if it resonates with consumers and we’ll take it from there.”
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