Back in May 2013 ,Victors & Spoils got a call from Bolthouse Farms asking if we’d be willing to work with them and Michael Moss, the author of “Salt, Sugar, Fat,” to create a “fake” campaign to promote and reposition the lowly vegetable, broccoli. The question was intriguing: If you used the same tactics and skills used to promote the biggest and most powerful food brands, could we move the needle on broccoli sales? If it worked, it might be a blueprint for how produce marketers can turn healthy foods into fun foods and in the process fight the U.S. obesity epidemic.
We applied the Victors & Spoils open philosophy and got over 100 people — from food experts and farmers to chefs and school lunch experts and of course a few marketing experts — involved in the strategic and creative process.