Oscar Mayer smokes its thick-cut bacon for 12 hours. To draw attention to that fact, the brand took an unusual approach that hijacks beauty advertising.
The campaign, by agency Johannes Leonardo, features a series of 15- and 30-second spots that start simply, with shots of the meat slowly cooking and an explanation about how that process imbues it with a strong, smoky flavor.
The commercial break then transitions to what seems to be an unrelated spot: an archetypal promo for a lip gloss promoting its long-lasting shine or a razor offering a close shave.
In both cases, the actors are interrupted by an overpowering smell, with Oscar Mayer revealing that the bacon is still smoking.
“All bacon ads are about bacon, but when your bacon is smoked longer than most, sometimes your bacon ad will run into a beauty ad, or a shaving ad,” Johannes Leonardo creative director Zack Roif said in a statement. “When the regular 15-second media buy just isn’t enough time to demonstrate how long we smoke your bacon, we took aim at disrupting all the other ads to prove our point. We’re smoked longer.”
The tactic is reminiscent of an out-of-home campaign from Jollibee in 2022, in which the restaurant chain produced watch and fragrance ads that were actually linked to their own digital billboards.
The Oscar Mayer campaign will incorporate online video, social media, display and streaming audio tactics across iHeartRadio, Twitch and sports mediums. Social media posts measure the bacon’s cook time in screen time averages or the length of multiple basketball or football games.
