Food for thought: What's working in food advertising

When we created this year’s State of Creative Effectiveness report, we decided to dive a bit deeper into what creative effectiveness looks like in each category. 

We tend to see big differences in creative effectiveness across categories. Some are better at branding, some can produce more emotional stories, some lean more on humor. After all, chances are what works for retail advertising won’t be the same as what’s working for CPG or QSR advertising. 

Let’s start there. So what is working in the food category nowadays? And what do consumers think about what they’re seeing from brands?  

Read on for a look into what we discovered from our study of effectiveness data from over 4,000 US ads for the food category, which includes CPG, salty and sweet snacks and restaurants, as well as some examples of food advertising done right.

Before we get into the details, let’s first cover where the data comes from. 

Developed in partnership with some of the world’s biggest consumer brands, the Zappi Amplify Ad System blends the best thinking in advertising research to give a well-rounded and complete picture of creative effectiveness. 

• In-context exposure: Measures real media behavior, ad skipping, brand recall and purchase impact.

• Emojis: Captures emotional response in an intuitive and globally relevant and representative way.

• Forced exposure: Assesses key ad KPIs, social risk and direct consumer feedback.

With this approach, we get a full picture of creative effectiveness. We can also understand an individual piece of creative’s strengths and weaknesses to help diagnose issues and optimize it so it performs to its fullest potential.

Looking across the data from over 4,000 US ads collected with this methodology , we focused on the averages for each metric for each category — in this case, the food category. 

Keep in mind that these are the averages of the category, which means that many of the individual ads in those categories are stronger than the average and many are weaker than the average. 

This helps us understand the general strengths and weaknesses of the whole category, not just individual brands within the category. This data can provide useful benchmarks for your individual ads and give a picture of how hard your advertising may need to work to overcome any common challenges for advertising within that category. 

Now that we’ve covered our approach, let’s get into our findings.

The CPG food category has a number of strengths overall compared to US advertising as a whole.

First, it’s one of the highest scoring categories in laughter, meaning it successfully leverages humor more than other categories. It also does well in distinctiveness, which is likely due in part to its use of humor. Humor is underused in advertising overall so making people laugh can help your ad stand out.

The category also has a strong purchase uplift, which is very important for the small, repeatable purchases you often find in food categories like snacks and candies. After all, you have to stay in consumers’ consideration set so when they’re in the position to buy, your brand is top of mind! 

Unfortunately, this category scored slightly weaker on brand recall, which means that the category isn’t as strong at cueing the brand.

💡 Zappi advice: Get your branding right across each ad. Give your brand a clear role in the story and work to develop consistency in your communications platform and tone of voice. Make intentional and repeated use of DBAs. And if you don't have any DBAs, now is the time to establish them. There’s also an opportunity to stand out with ads that evoke more of a feeling of love.

Now let’s look at salty snacks (like chips, crackers and pretzels) and sweet snacks (like chocolate, candy and packaged pastries) to dive a little deeper into the food category.

We see two big differences between these classic categories. 

First, salty snacks have one of the strongest brand recall scores, while sweet snacks have one of the lowest. Second, salty snacks have one of the highest laughter scores while sweet snacks have one of the highest love scores. 

Sweet treats are often associated with indulgence, holidays and special occasions — so that love score certainly makes sense. And we can think of countless examples of hilarious salty snack ads, so that’s no surprise either! 

💡 Zappi advice: Sweet snack brands must focus on improving their brand recall. Don’t let your distinctive, emotionally engaging ads go to waste with less than average branding. Salty snack brands are doing well, but may want to consider how to tap into deeper emotions every once in a while.

Finally, let’s look at restaurants. As a category, restaurants beat the average in emotional connection, with above average scores on relevance, overall emotion and love specifically.

This emotional connection also benefits the brand with strong brand recall. This is likely due to the decades restaurant brands have spent building their distinctive brand assets (think McDonald’s golden arches, KFC’s Colonel Sanders, Starbucks’ green color and distinctive cups) 

They may not have the most distinctive ads on average, or the funniest, but they produce ads that make people feel a good mix of love and like, that are relevant to the audience, and importantly, make them remember the brand. 

💡 Zappi advice: Keep focusing on getting your branding right. 70% brand recall is better than the average, but there’s still room for improvement! Standing out from the crowd with distinctiveness is another key area to focus on. Additionally, there are a lot of similarities in restaurant ads, so there’s an opportunity to break this mold and stand out (see an example from Chipotle later in this report).

Here’s a few examples of brands who did a great job at advertising for their category, whether it be for CPG, snacks or restaurants: 

1. Doritos’ “Abduction”

While some CPG brands struggle with getting their branding right or giving their brand a clear role in the story, this is something that Doritos knocks out of the park. 

This is particularly true for their Super Bowl ad this year, a winner from their revamped Crash the Super Bowl contest, which gives creators the opportunity to enter their own Doritos ad into a competition for a chance to be selected as the brand’s Super Bowl ad.

Titled “Abduction,” this year’s winner was created by Ohio-native Dylan Bradshaw, and features a man fighting to save his bag of Doritos from being abducted by aliens. The man and the alien ultimately shared a bag together in the end. 

The whole story revolves around Doritos being so desirable that even an alien wants them — and a human would fight hard not to let them go. Ultimately, you can’t play back the story without talking about the role of Doritos!

2. KitKat’s “Break Better”

We found that brands in the sweets category should consider focusing on the brand recall in their advertising, and KitKat is a timeless example of a sweet treat brand that excels in this area. 

KitKat has been using their instantly recognizable line, “Have a break, have a KitKat” since 1958. The brand has successfully evolved the idea of “having a break” and grounded it in real consumer insights over time — ensuring that it always feels relevant, while building upon their brand recall with every iteration.

In their recent “Break Better” ad, the brand played with the idea that it’s difficult to truly take a break in today’s world. This spot shows a young man sitting at his desk in a bustling office. When he stands up to take a break, all his post-it notes, pens, laptop and even whiteboard start trailing behind him and eventually sticking to him as “I Want to Break Free” by Queen starts to play. Eventually he opens a KitKat and all the items fall off of him, allowing him to truly take a well-deserved break. 

It’s a clever way to visually show how hard it can be to disconnect — and feature KitKat as a hero in that story. It works because KitKat has owned “having a break” for 80 years, so it feels consistent but also fresh for audiences!

 3. Chipotle’s “Unfolded” 

As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of similarities in restaurant ads, and this ad from Chipotle does a fantastic job at breaking the mold and standing out. 

“Unfolded” was created to generate awareness for the future of sustainable agriculture, with an animated film produced by Venables Bell & Partners and brought to life by the Grammy-nominated artist Halsey.

For the category, under 10% of advertising is set in a rural setting (with 80% of fast-food advertising set indoors), making this ad highly different from what's expected.

The unique setting combined with a beautiful visual style and compelling music from a popular artist produced a distinctive ad that audiences knew could only be for Chipotle. 

There is a lot that brands in the food industry can learn from consumers about what’s working in their advertising and what’s not. 

For more on how to create ads that win with consumers, download our report for a deeper dive into our findings, including: 

• How creative effectiveness varies among different ages and genders 

• The impact of various advertising characteristics on effectiveness, like the use of celebrities, music, AI, etc.

• Strengths and weaknesses of different categories including CPG food, QSR, alcoholic beverages, financial services, telecommunications and more

• Helpful tips and examples to help you develop your most effective creative — including guidance from our partners at VaynerMedia, an integrated strategy, creative and media agency