If I said Manwich, your first thought would likely be a drippy, beef-filled sloppy joe. ConAgra Foods hopes to change that through Manwich's new advertising campaign, which focuses on the fact that each serving of the tomato-based sauce has a full serving of vegetables.
"The fact that Manwich has a full serving of
vegetables in each serving was something we were keeping to ourselves
and had never communicated to consumers before," ConAgra representative Becky Niiya tells Media Daily.
The vegetables in Manwich are a secret just being revealed? That seems an odd bit of phrasing. Before now, was ConAgra concerned that Manwich eaters would be aghast to learn that there were vegetables in their meat sandwich? It's also difficult to make an argument for vegetables when your main ingredient -- tomato puree -- is a fruit.
This campaign, Meat Your Vegetables, is just another offshoot
of the current trend wherein all of the products that we ingest have
some form of health claim.
It would be nice to see a company go in the opposite direction for once, and champion what it does best. Be unapologetic about why people like their product and what that product provides.
I'm not thinking about vegetables when I go to tackle a sloppy joe. Manwich goes with meat -- that's the association that I've had since I was a kid. If you were to ask me who eats it, I would say big guys spilling out of white undershirts that quickly grow stained by the drippings from sesame seed buns.
The values of meat-dripping goodness are what ConAgra needs to address, because at the end of the day, that's what makes a Manwich a meal.
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