• by Laurie Petersen , April 6, 2007

Pharmavite breaks a campaign Monday for its new SoyJoy nutrition bars using two TV spots that feature individual women speaking to the camera appearing as if they are in a videoblog to capture the snack bar's positioning as true and honest real food with the theme "Real Is Revolutionary."

"This is real food being launched into a category filled with candy bars masquerading as nutrition bars," said David Smith, senior vice president and creative director at RPA, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based agency that created the effort. "Because the Internet is where consumers are turning to find the truth behind the marketing, we've used that world as a reference point for all of our advertising."

All television, print and online advertising for the $30 million marketing effort supporting the product leads back to the Web.

Print ads for the product--whose four varieties feature colorful packaging atypical for the category--carry headlines in upper-case letters with URLs leading to specific Web messages. They are: SOYEATERS-MAKEBETTERLOVERS.COM, YOGA-FORYOURMOUTH.COM, IFYOUCANT-PRONOUNCEIT-DONT-EAT-IT.COM, HEY-MAN-IJUSTNEEDASNACK.COM. These same URLS extend to the banners, which have started running on Oprah.com and Shape.com. Pharmavite, best known for Nature Made vitamins, launched SoyJoy in January. The bar enters a crowded $3 billion snack bar category (more than 900 have been introduced since 2001). The product is sold at food, drug, mass market, convenience and natural food stores, as well as drugstore.com.

Sampling is part of the marketing effort. A campaign on the Web is giving away three free bars--inviting visitors to keep one and share the other two with friends. It has drawn 40,000 requests in a few weeks, said RPA Management Supervisor Rose Bush.

Media consists of national cable TV, women's and health and wellness magazines, online display ads and paid search. TV will break on more than 20 networks, including A&E, E!, Food Network, HGTV, Lifetime, Nickelodeon, TBS and VH1.

Online buys include ads on the Advertising.com and ValueClick networks as well as display ads on Web sites Evite, InStyle, iVillage, Yoga Journal, Oprah.com, People, and Shape. Search engine optimization involves certain category and branded terms.

"SOYJOY nutrition bars fulfill a missing piece of many people's diets--a healthy, real food snack," said Tom Zimmerman, vice president of business development at Pharmavite.