McVitie’s Go Ahead! axes fitness star for new £5m TV ad campaign
McVitie’s Go Ahead!, the food company’s low-fat snack range, has dropped Mr Motivator from its advertising as part of a new 10m marketing campaign.
The TV fitness star, who helped launch the brand in 1996 and appeared in TV commercials for the range up until this year, will not feature in a new 5m TV campaign starring fictitious “snack police”, which breaks this week.
Three new 30- to 40-second executions feature a detective sergeant and WPC of the “snack police” attempting to charge people for eating unhealthy snacks. The campaign was developed by Go Ahead! agency Publicis, with media buying by Starcom.
McVitie’s UK marketing director Will Carter, who describes Mr Motivator as “a very intrusive front man”, says: “He did an excellent launch job for us, but as we move to the next phase of the brand’s development, we felt it was the right time for a change.”
McVitie’s is aiming to emphasise the taste benefits of the Go Ahead! range, which features cakes, pizzas and biscuits. It is also to be boosted with a new product – strawberry dream cake bars – taking the number of lines to 27. Sales reached 70m last year.
Go Ahead! is the leader in the low-fat snacks and desserts market, which McVitie’s estimates at being worth 200m.
