Marmite asks Gen Z to experience their first time with the spread

The playfully suggestive campaign was created by adam&eveDDB

By creative salon

03 October 2023

Marmite has targeted young adults with a playfully suggestive campaign inviting them to experience their first time with Marmite, after YouGov research revealed that 43 per cent of 18-24 year olds in the UK have never tried the spread.

Coinciding with Freshers’ Week – famously a time of experimentation - 'First-Timers' treats us to a useful lesson in how to eat Marmite, and, perhaps even more importantly when it comes to first-timers, how not to do it.

The 60-second hero film, created by adam&eveDDB, features two puppets who try out putting Marmite on a slice of toast for the first time, they are invited to "stroke that” “push that” and “lick that” via a series of suggestive scenarios. The film is set to a specially recorded music track by US music producer, Giraffage, who remixed his electro track “Workout”. The end line is “Love it. Hate it. Get it on.”

To extend the ‘First timers’ theme, Marmite is set to give thousands of sampling kits to first-timers at universities across the country, launch TikTok challenge called 'Are you a Marmite First-Timer? and a quiz on Tinder called 'Sticky Situations' asking participants to 'love' or 'hate' certain behaviour in a potential partner, in humorous and saucy language.

Laura Iliffe, Marmite Brand Manager, said: “Marmite is a brand which is embedded in UK culture, and so many of us have grown up with it. We pride ourselves on sparking debate and strong opinions and most consumers are either lovers or haters. However, when we saw the number of young adults who had never even tried it – we knew we had to do something to dare them to take the plunge and try our special spread. This campaign represents a step-change in the way we advertise Marmite – with a clear focus on driving trial and penetration. We want to recruit our next generation of lovers, and show young adults how to approach their first-time with Marmite.”

Ben Tollett, Group Executive Creative Director at adam&eveDDB added: “The UK has a great tradition of comedy double acts: French and Saunders, Reeves and Mortimer, Mel and Sue, Mitchell and Webb. Unfortunately they all declined the auditions, so we were stuck with a pair of filthy-minded puppets.”

The campaign also includes Spotify and banner ads, with one Spotify ad featuring a remixed version of the Giraffage track used in the film, and another using ASMR to get potential Marmite customers in the mood.

Still to come is a PR campaign, led by W Communications, which will invite university students to ‘pop their Marmite cherry’. The experience will see first-timers taken through a series of specially curated sensory experiments, all designed to help them discover whether they are a lover or a hater. Each experiment will be playfully bring to life the suggestive scenarios seen in the hero film.

The 60-second hero film will launch on TV on the 3rd October with shorter films running across video-on-demand, the campaign is also supported by social media and digital OOH.

The media for the campaign was planned and bought by Mindshare UK.