• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, April 12, 2017

Ritz Crackers is jumping into two firsts for the brand: partnerships with popular musicians, and voice-activated content.

First, Ritz is launching an ad campaign in which recipes featuring the crackers are backed by various artists’ covers of New Kids on the Block’s 80’s hit, “You Got It (The Right Stuff).”

The ads are the latest extension of Ritz’s “Life’s Rich” campaign, from The Martin Agency, launched in spring 2015. 

The first 15-second spot (below), featuring a cover by singer, songwriter and trumpet player Spencer Ludwig, began airing this week on NBC, Bravo and HGTV. The only audio other than the music is an ending voiceover message: “You’ve got the right stuff to make life rich” — meaning the creativity to come up with new pairings and recipes using Ritz. 

A six-second clip of the ad is being used across Ritz’s social channels. The brand is running paid advertising both on social media and online.

In addition, there’s a nearly 4-minute video on YouTube that features the full track of the song, with a virtually blank background, except for a title screenshot identifying the song and the artist, and showing a Ritz logo. (Ludwig gets promotion for his music via links to his own music video on Diggy and his social media pages.)

Ritz isn’t yet revealing how many more of the ads will be released, or the identities of the other featured musicians.

Kicking Off Voice-Controlled Recipe Show

But Ritz has announced that Ludwig will also star in a voice-activated, sponsored-content show to debut in May (specific date to be determined) on Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Ritz will be the featured brand in the first episode of the voice-activated show, “Recipe Remix.” The program is being created and produced by Nue, a marketing agency that that uses music and technology to reach consumers, with input from startup studio/seed venture capital company Betaworks.

The show’s concept: musicians demonstrate how to make one of their favorite recipes, with their music serving as a soundtrack.

Ritz’s kickoff episode will feature Ludwig making his meatloaf recipe — which (surprise) uses Ritz Crackers — accompanied by his rendition of “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” and other tracks of his.

Ritz confirms that it has other episodes in development, to be announced later in the year, but isn’t saying whether the other artists tapped for its ad campaign will also be the ones featured in more Recipe Remix episodes.

The show is meant to make cooking fun, through the upbeat music, and easy, with the voice-controlled technology. Users can employ commands to stop and replay any stage in the recipe, while keeping their hands free to cook and avoiding the need to touch device screens with messy hands.

The audio-only shows are expected to run anywhere from about 20 minutes to an hour in uninterrupted mode, reports a brand rep. Different tracks from the artist correspond to different stages in the recipe — so that if, for instance, a user needs to cut onions for three minutes, one song will play for three minutes.

In addition, there will be a Web site where those so inclined can recap the recipes and their ingredients.

A one-minute video will be made for each episode, strictly for promotional/advertising purposes.

“We know that good food and good music go hand in hand to make an occasion extraordinary, so we're thrilled to be teaming up with some of the hottest contemporary musicians to bring our campaign to life,” said Lauren Sella, director of Ritz equity for North America.