• by Steve Ellwanger , April 21, 2023

Things are hopping in the product-testing department of frozen treats brand Blue Bunny.

A year ago this month, Blue Bunny introduced its new CEO—an animated blue bunny named Blu—along with rabbit “employees.”

That prompted a satiric take on product testing in the form of a “Saturday Night Live” skit in which the characters went off the rails.

Now Blu is back, accompanied by a body builder and a saxophone player to introduce Blue Bunny mini bars and soft-serve ice cream—as seen in this spot from the Observatory agency.

“Bunnies running a business is such a fun idea, with never-ending opportunities to peek behind the curtain,” Observatory president and chief creative officer Linda Knight tells Marketing Daily. “This is the next installment, the second act of our campaign.”

Last year, Blue Bunny created the tagline “We Make Fun” by depicting people visiting a low-ceilinged headquarters while acting less mature than the real rabbits that supposedly ran the place.

That spawned a four-person “focus group” on “Saturday Night Live” that included guest host Benedict Cumberbatch and another participant exchanging bizarre childhood “memories of the Dust Bowl.”

Asked about one flavor, Cumberbatch responded “I can taste generations of women in it.”

That was a completely unplanned product placement, according to Knight. “We did nothing -- and they didn’t approach us [beforehand],” she recalls.

“We woke up on Sunday morning and someone had texted me that it was on ‘Saturday Night Live’ the night before. Obviously one of their writers had seen the campaign and used that to build upon.

Meanwhile, the new paid campaign creative is running on digital and social media platforms, connected-television, radio and digital out-of-home placements.