• by Erik Oster , October 25, 2023

Bragg Live Foods launched a campaign highlighting an unlikely aspect of one of its flagship products: apple cider vinegar is just kind of weird. (How many food items do you know that brag about containing “the mother” in the bottle?)

Rather than dancing around the issue, the campaign leans into this inherent weirdness, while nodding to purported health benefits that have made the product trendy in wellness circles in recent years.

A series of ads, developed with the brand’s agency of record, Fortnight Collective -- which has worked with Bragg’s Live Foods since this past March -- introduces a new tagline and brand ethos for Bragg: “It’s Not Weird If It Works.”

Two ads nods at apple cider vinegar’s pungency, saluting those who can handle it straight while introducing new alternatives. One spotlights a line of more palatable Blends easing the harshness with flavors like honey, cranberry, citrus ginger, and honey cayenne. Another highlights the brand’s new supplement offering, for those who’d like an alternative to a cider vinegar drink altogether.

The third ad alludes to the fact that the brand’s apple cider vinegar recipe hasn’t changed in some 112 years, speaking to its staying power as a pantry staple.

The campaign also includes three audio spots and podcast placements, social media elements, and digital OOH billboards. The integrated campaign will run on programmatic digital, Meta, YouTube, and Spotify nationally, as well as on digital OOH regionally in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati; and Bentonville, Arkansas.

“It’s Not Weird If It Works" is a brand perspective Bragg Live Foods hopes to take well into the future, with applications for forthcoming product offerings.

“The challenge of this work was to take a century-old iconic brand that everybody owns but nobody thinks about and make it absolutely unignorable,” Fortnight Collective Creative Director Becca Schepps said in a statement. “And the way to do this was to show up in advertising with the most legendary parts of this brand front and center: The bright yellow label, the wordiness, the fact that this stuff is actually raw, real, unfiltered and to many people, would never win a taste competition.”