This holiday season, forget Krampus: Ocean Spray is giving a brand-minded spin to the folklore figure in a new campaign that casts actor Bryan Cranston as a horned, cranberry-obsessed grump named Cranpus, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
“Every year we think about how we're going to break through our Super Bowl season, which is October to November. That's the height of cranberry consumption. It's the holiday moment. We always try to find new ways to really be disruptive,” said Eliza Sadler, head of brand elevation for Ocean Spray.
“Just Add Cran, Beware of Cranpus” features a 60-second video that will run on streaming TV and sees Cranston’s Cranpus spoiling the party in a variety of ways that showcase Ocean Spray’s range of products. He eats all the cranberry sauce at dinner, steals it off leftover sandwiches, mixes up cocktails with cranberry juice and grabs craisins from a cooking show taping. The humorous spot is intended to showcase the importance of cranberries by demonstrating what happens when they’re missing.
“We saw an opportunity to come out with an even bolder, bigger campaign than we've ever done before and to punch up that narrative in a meaningful way, with the goal of emphasizing cranberry essentiality during the holiday season,” Sadler said.
Cultural moments on social
In addition to streaming TV, the campaign will run on digital channels, including interactive social content. The media plan is intended to help the campaign break through a holiday period dominated by plenty of branded storytelling, Sadler said.
“We're trying to find new avenues to tell the story in a surround-sound way,” the executive explained. “If you're on your phone, who's not going to stop scrolling if they see Bryan Cranston chugging cranberry sauce or an Ocean Spray cranberry juice bottle?”
Ocean Spray last year refreshed its brand identity for the first time in more than two decades, highlighting a “wildly uncommon” approach to culture, creative and connecting with consumers. The brand followed up the overhaul with the “Just Add Cran” masterbrand campaign and tagline that it is iterating on this holiday season. Working with a notable actor who has “cran” in his name was a no-brainer, and the “Breaking Bad” star helped push the creative even further than first presented.
“The original story was born from a place of ‘Just Add Cran, not Cranston,’ which was same storyline, same narrative, but instead it's Bryan Cranston playing himself and him stealing the cranberries,” Sadler said. “He was actually the one that said, ‘What happens if we dial this up even more?’”
Despite its nearly 100-year legacy, Ocean Spray works to position itself as a maverick brand. Notably, the brand in 2020 quickly worked to build on the attention it received from a viral TikTok video in an early example of marketers utilizing the platform. The brand plans to roll out social activations that will continue the momentum of its latest creative.
“We saw this as having the potential to be a breakthrough cultural moment, but also create more of a continuum than a campaign to tell a longer lasting story and add further fuel to what we as a brand are always trying to do,” Sadler said.
