VCCP's first UK campaign for Sour Patch Kids, Not As Sweet As They Look, includes special-build posters where the sweets attack a neighbouring Oreo ad. Both are Mondelēz brands.
Sour Patch Kids has launched its first ever integrated campaign in the UK, and its opening move is to pick a fight with Oreo. Special-build posters in London and Bristol show the sweets apparently tearing into the Oreo poster next door, part of a new platform called Not As Sweet As They Look, created by VCCP, as Creative Review reported.
The idea plays on the gap between how the sweets look and how they taste: cute on the outside, sour and mischievous on the inside. Beyond the four special builds, other executions show a sweet being torn apart in a tug of war and a cheerful game of tennis played with a severed head. The Oreo stunt takes a rivalry the two brands have been playing out on social media and puts it on the street.
The joke has a twist: both brands belong to Mondelēz. VCCP’s chief creative officers Chris Birch and Jonny Parker led the work, with Girl&Bear producing and the CGI artist David McLeod.
Brand-on-brand rivalry is one of the oldest tricks in outdoor advertising, from BMW and Audi’s billboard war to Burger King’s swipes at McDonald’s, and it works because it turns a poster into a story people want to share. Doing it with a sister brand removes the legal risk and doubles the reach, since both Sour Patch Kids and Oreo get talked about.
For a brand barely known in Britain, starting with a personality rather than a product demonstration is the right call. It is VCCP’s third piece of work on this site in a fortnight, and the agency is about to inherit Ikea’s UK account from Mother. For more on what makes a brand character work, see our ranking of the best advertising campaigns.
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