- Life cereal is again reviving Mikey, a picky eater kid that first appeared in commercials within the early ‘70s and rose to pop cultural prominence, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- The spokesperson stars in a brand new musical industrial with a jingle that pulls inspiration from the unique “Mikey likes it” tagline. The creative depicting a busy morning in a busy household also bows a brand new tagline, “I actually love my life.”
- The spot, available in 15- and 30-second cuts, is running on streamers, social media, retail media and audio channels. Life is positioning the campaign as a brand refresh focused on messy mornings and the way families will be united around breakfast.
Life’s Mikey character first made a splash within the heyday of TV promoting, becoming a fixture over the course of a long time with a tagline that entered the broader popular culture lexicon. Life has looked for its “next Mikey” on a number of occasions, including in 1997 and in 2019, when the character was gender-flipped to be a young girl in a campaign titled “Stand off.”
Now, amid a wave of marketing centered on consumer nostalgia, the Quaker-owned brand is bringing the spokesperson back as part of a bigger refresh and with some additions, including a brand new tagline and musical bent. PepsiCo’s internal D3 creative agency is behind the trouble.
Ads that launched on Sept. 12 show the newest Mikey, played by Hudson Uebelhardt, as he details a morning full of mishaps, equivalent to toothpaste getting snagged in his mom’s hair, in song. The turbulence settles when his family gathers across the dining table, recreating an iconic moment as picky eater Mikey enjoys a bowl of Life, leading his siblings to exclaim, “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” The spot closes on Mikey repeating, “I actually love my life!”
The upbeat commercials have a heavily digital media plan, appearing on Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, Canela, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, Meta and SiriusXM. Life can also be taking advantage of retail media through Walmart Connect, the big-box store’s promoting arm that helps brands place messages close to the purpose of sale with help from first-party shopper data.
A deluge of brands have recently dusted off old catchphrases, characters and jingles to tap right into a sense of consumer familiarity, while modernizing those assets to recognize that media consumption habits have drifted toward smartphones and streaming. Maybelline New York earlier this month resurrected “Maybe It’s Maybelline,” a tagline that debuted in 1991, with a concentrate on TikTok and social media influencers.
PepsiCo, Quaker’s parent, has contended with slumping U.S. demand as consumers grapple with rising prices. The Quaker Foods division saw volumes plunge 17% in Q2 in North America, a dip attributed to product recalls over salmonella contamination. Quaker has introduced other marketing initiatives to boost consumer favor. The core Quaker line in February launched its first global brand platform, which spotlights on a regular basis heroes like parents.
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