Dive Brief:
- Instacart is paying homage to the classic stop-motion animated movies of Rankin/Bass for its holiday ad campaign, which showcases scenarios where the delivery platform helps out in a pinch, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- In a series of new spots, people in the real world are faced with different holiday crises, like a dog wrecking Christmas decorations or an intimidating pie recipe, before opening Instacart’s app to find solutions. The setting then shifts to a wintry, animated wonderland where talking animals assemble delivery orders that set things right.
- Beyond the national ads, Instacart is promoting a pie kit on social media with reality TV star Boston Rob and working with New York Times Cooking on Sunday paper spreads. At the same time, the company unveiled the name of its internal creative agency, Local Produce, which helped develop several aspects of the campaign.
Dive Insight:
Rankin/Bass specials like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman” are indelibly tied up with the holidays and can spark a strong sense of nostalgia in consumers. Instacart is trying to capture some of that seasonal magic with ads that apply the same colorful stop-motion animation style to highlight the convenience and range of goods available on the company’s mobile app, including non-grocery items like Christmas ornaments and lights.
Instacart is appealing to people — dubbed “Magic Makers” — who take on an outsized share of holiday prep duties but are looking to take some of the pressure off this year, an ethos embodied in a new creative platform titled “Get a little magic delivered.” The stop-motion spots, which were created with Starburns Industries, RadicalMedia and internal shop Local Produce, will appear nationally across linear TV, over-the-top, paid social and online video.
“We designed this campaign to celebrate the people quietly holding the holidays together,” said Jasmine Taylor, vice president of brand marketing at Instacart, in a statement. “There’s so much pressure to make every moment perfect, and we wanted to offer some relief.”
The seasonal push is receiving additional support from over 25 CPG partners, including Oatly, Kerrygold, Duracell, Marie Calendar and Breyer’s, some of which appear in the commercials alongside animated characters like a muscly polar bear and sunglasses-sporting cat. In addition, those brands will have a hand in retail media activations running from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve.
Instacart is extending the life-hack elements of the effort to social media with its Lie Pie kit that comes with an already baked pie but separately packaged ingredients to convince friends and family that the pastry is homemade, a concept from agency Rethink. Boston Rob, a reality TV star known for his underhanded approach to winning on shows like “Survivor,” is promoting the Lie Pie on social channels. A limited batch of the kits will be available in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago for shoppers who donate to Feeding America through a Lie Pie microsite.
“Get a little magic delivered” follows a fall campaign from Instacart that depicted Sunday Scaries, like needing to do laundry and wash dishes, as animated monsters. The platform’s hand-crafted approach to holiday marketing could serve as a counter to brands that are leaning harder into artificial intelligence-generated ads for the occasion.
Other brands have taken a page from Rankin/Bass classics to enliven their seasonal advertising. Prebiotic soda disruptor Olipop last year ran holiday ads featuring misunderstood yetis that were animated with stop motion.
