Marmite to team up with ‘Horrid Henry’ books
Unilever brand Marmite is launching a “playful” integrated campaign featuring children’s book characters Horrid Henry and Perfect Peter to promote its partnership with Reading For Life, a government-funded initiative to encourage children to read.
The brand is giving away free audio book downloads and has created two promotional jars featuring illustrations of the characters dubbed “Marmite is Horrid/Marmite is Perfect” to highlight the on-pack giveaway and align the promotion with Marmite’s “You either love it or you hate it” tagline.
Reading For Life is a government initiative launched through the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCFS), aimed at promoting reading from a young age.
Advertising agency Iris has created the advertising elements targeting families with young children to support the partnership, including press ads in the form of health and beauty editorial pages that appear to have been sabotaged by the two characters to encourage mums to buy Marmite.
Marmite marketing manager Cheryl Calverley says: “The Horrid Henry stories in particular have a great resonance with Marmite fans. Whether you think Marmite is horrid, like Henry or perfect, like Peter, audiobooks are a great way to keep your kids out of mischief.”
The campaign also includes online activity created by AKQA and PR activity by Splendid. It is the first work Iris has carried out for the brand since winning the account.
The partnership between DCFS and Marmite was brokered by Cocktail Marketing.
