Welch’s, the maker of jams, juices and jellies, has shaken up its advertising and marketing lately, enacting a rebrand in 2024 and experimenting with extra millennial-friendly activations like a rosé truck and bodega speakeasy. With its newest vacation marketing campaign, the farmer-owned model is trying again to its previous, tapping right into a nostalgia craze that has taken over CPG advertising and marketing whereas including some trendy bells and whistles.
For the primary time in 1 / 4 century, Welch’s artistic will star a child character, although the media technique extends properly past the TV commercials of yore. “Break Out the Fancy Juice” facilities on a precocious, bowtie-sporting spokesperson named Charlie Cheersman (10-year-old Paxton Beau Bazile) as he highlights events massive and small for cracking open a bottle of Welch’s Glowing Juices, like nailing the household Christmas photograph. Welch’s lately overhauled its glowing portfolio, reinvesting in a manufacturing line at a Lawton, Michigan, facility and reformulating its apple cider taste right into a Crisp Apple variant boasting improved style.
The most important advertising and marketing effort thus far supporting Welch’s decade-old glowing choices, “Break Out the Fancy Juice” launches Tuesday throughout TV, digital, social, retail media, sampling and in-person experiences, with plans to leverage Charlie Cheersman for future seasons, comparable to summer season 2026. The return to kid-focused promoting after over twenty years is available in response to an current client sentiment Welch’s beforehand underleveraged, in line with executives.
“Nostalgia might be the No. 1 factor that folks speak about. We’ve seen it in our inner model fairness research,” stated Katelyn Nugent, head of built-in advertising and marketing and communications at Welch’s. “I believe we had gotten away from possibly tapping into the resonance that [nostalgia] drives for shoppers.”
Passing the baton
Different CPGs have employed an analogous playbook to generate emotional resonance. Life, the cereal marketed by Quaker, final 12 months revived Mikey, a choosy eater related to the long-lasting “Mikey likes it” tagline from the Nineteen Seventies. Welch’s is taking a multiphased method to reacclimating shoppers to artistic anchored round an adolescent.
The model has been teeing up the debut of Charlie with social movies reminiscing about Welch’s final youngster star (Emily Mae Younger), who appeared in TV spots within the ‘90s espousing the sippable high quality and lip-smacking taste of Welch’s grape juices (“Who remembers this woman from the Welch’s commercials?” reads an Instagram put up Welch’s shared earlier this month). Welch’s has since tried to broaden its picture past historic ties to Harmony grapes, therefore the rebrand final 12 months. The Glowing Juices lineup consists of non-grape flavors like Ardour Fruit Mango, Strawberry and Crisp Apple.
By stoking recollections of Younger on-line, Welch’s is making a baton cross to Charlie, who’s a bit older and was designed to be absolutely built-in into all facets of the marketing campaign, together with retail media and experiential advertising and marketing. Welch’s now sometimes invests 55% to 60% of its working media budgets on retail media networks, Nugent estimated.
On the expertise entrance, the model will pop up at vacation markets in six cities for “Break Out the Fancy Juice,” together with Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake Metropolis, Boston, New York and Portland, Oregon. Charlie will lead social content material selling these in-person activations, and will make a visitor look at choose places.
“We knew that [TV] couldn’t be the one place he popped up. The ability of the Charlie Cheersman character is his deeper storytelling,” stated Nugent.
“Break Out the Fancy Juice” additionally exhibits Welch’s persevering with to experiment with influencers, which solely began to issue into its advertising and marketing about 14 months in the past, in line with Nugent. Legacy CPG manufacturers broadly have embraced extra influencer- and social-first techniques as they appear to attach with younger shoppers who’ve minimize the wire on linear TV.
“We’re nonetheless in our nascent levels of testing [influencer marketing], however we’ve seen monumental response, and admittedly, that’s the place loads of these feedback round nostalgia are available in,” stated Nugent. “We’re testing and studying our manner in, however it continues to be a much bigger channel that we’re taking a look at when it comes to funding.”
A brand new section for Welch’s advertising and marketing
Welch’s festive marketing campaign was developed with an built-in company staff (IAT) made up of Terri & Sandy on artistic, Flywheel on paid media, Matter Communications on PR and Superdigital on social, influencers and model activations. Enlisting a number of company companions follows Welch’s shift off of a single company of document mannequin after Fitzco dealt with its rebrand.
“I might say this Glowing marketing campaign isn’t our first, however undoubtedly is our best-in-class when it comes to leveraging the facility of the IAT,” stated Nugent.
The evolving method to advertising and marketing providers follows a bigger shakeup in Welch’s prime ranks. The model in July named Cees Talma, former chief govt of Nature’s Manner, as its CEO, succeeding Trevor Bynum. CMO Scott Utke, who labored on “Break Out the Fancy Juice,” departed the CPG earlier this month. Welch’s on Oct. 15 appointed former Nature’s Manner CMO Andrew Hartshorn to the newly created place of chief model and innovation officer, which successfully fills the previous CMO slot.
Hartshorn is concentrated on getting new concepts to market quicker and shoring up Welch’s model storytelling. Whereas it’s nonetheless too early to inform what the complete influence of those modifications will probably be, Nugent cited the potential for better innovation within the methods Welch’s exhibits up for shoppers. The over 150-year-old model already has large ambitions for 2026, together with tying Glowing Juices nearer to the summer season season via Charlie and celebrating America’s 250th anniversary.
“We all know increasingly gross sales are coming via on-line channels than brick and mortar,” stated Nugent. “How we proceed to leverage that digital storytelling with the purpose of sale I believe can be important as we head into the subsequent section of our model.”
