‘The Nutterverse’ campaign by Dentsu Creative New York won Gold in Content Use of Social Media at The Drum Awards. It revitalized the 55-year-old Nutter Butter brand by creating an absurdist TikTok universe, engaging Gen Z through surreal storytelling and community-driven content, resulting in a 16.5% increase in household penetration among younger consumers.
Nutter Butter, a 55-year-old brand with a major relevancy problem, had fallen into obscurity. The once beloved peanut-butter childhood snack of today’s parents and grandparents hadn’t advertised in decades. Of the shelves that Nutter Butter was still on, it had found itself pushed to the back.
We were tasked with getting Nutter Butter into the minds and mouths of a new generation whose consumption habits and ways of interacting with brands had drastically changed. In a category that often relies on deep pockets and celebrity endorsements, the harsh reality was that we weren’t even competing.
On top of this, marketing to Gen Z is a tall task for a 55-year-old cookie that’s virtually invisible to them. With brands increasingly invading their cultural spaces and digital communities, they’re quick to realize when they’re being sold to. Simultaneously, Gen Z rely heavily on social media to help inform their purchasing decisions. We knew where they were, but they had to come to us.
Advertisement
Armed with a very modest budget and even less relevancy, we had to leverage creativity to reintroduce Nutter Butter to a world that felt like it had moved on from the old-fashioned snack.
That’s when we identified the brand’s biggest weakness as its greatest strength. Nutter Butter’s complete lack of advertising in over a decade provided the golden opportunity to give it something most other brands can’t get: a fresh start. With no brand guidelines to adhere to, we had the freedom to build a groundbreaking social approach for one of the oldest products in the category.
We quickly realized there was no point trying to fit in with the modern world. So we went back to our brand origins for inspiration: Nutter Butter has always seen the world through a nutty lens. But we needed to find our tribe. So we turned to TikTok for its algorithm and over 1 billion users, bringing the modern world into our own new, nutty universe.
We called it 'The Nutterverse': an ever-expanding world of absurdist escapism so distinct, engaging, and thumb-stoppingly nutty that viewers couldn’t turn away from our mesmerizing content. Every TikTok incorporated elements of surreal storytelling, cultural phenomena, and most importantly, the peanut-butter product itself.
The Nutterverse was inspired by Gen Z interests that felt fitting to define nuttiness in 2024, including surrealism and the analog-horror genre. We always pinpointed the emotions we wanted our content to evoke in viewers, and tailored pieces accordingly through techniques such as manipulating sound while mashing up real-world imagery with “deep-fried” lo-fi digital graphics.
But we didn’t just create the Nutterverse ourselves. As our hyper-engaged community obsessed over the lore, we secretly turned their predictions and conspiracies into our next content prompt. We thoughtfully placed easter eggs and clues, hinting at theories pulled straight from community discourse on-and-off channel, keeping viewers emotionally invested and leaving them waiting for the next video to confirm if they’d cracked the code.
The goal was to co-create a community of nuttiness, and thanks to TikTok’s functionalities like duetting, stitching, and reposting, the social platform was the perfect home for this bold idea. As the Nutterverse expanded, it became an ever-evolving reflection of our fandom and their taste for absurdity.
Advertisement
The combination of community-driven non-linear storytelling and application of our unique visual style quickly established Nutter Butter’s presence, while instantly setting us apart from every other brand on social. As a result, Nutter Butter showed up on TikTok the last way you’d ever expect any brand to express itself, let alone a 55-year old snack brand.
Knowing our audience loves to escape and discover through their TikTok feed, we slowly became a new outlet that droves of fans increasingly flocked to. Our surreal, fever-dream Nutterverse TikToks found their way into more peoples’ feeds, FYPs and algorithms. While we always planned to expand the Nutterverse, we under-estimated how quickly it would flood TikTok and spill over into culture.
The Nutterverse led to an unexpected cultural renaissance for Nutter Butter, creating a cult-following of new fans and reigniting the cravings of those who had completely forgotten about the peanut-butter snack. Household penetration (latest 26 weeks ending 10/26/24) for Gen Z/Y (1977 or later) has grown +16.5% vs a year ago.
We caught the attention of celebrities and creators like Joe Jonas (6.5M TikTok followers), Trisha Paytas (10.2M), Casey Neistat (874.8K) and Tana Mongeau (8.6M), not to mention social banter from some of the most recognizable brands in the world, including Crocs, who created their own peanut-butter slathered Nutterverse content.
Advertisement
Nutter Butter earned 177 media placements generating 3.3B+ impressions. Outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, Forbes, Today, BuzzFeed, Fast Company, CBS Pittsburgh, Ad Age, Adweek, The Daily Mail, SiriusXM, and The Food Network all shared the Nutterverse with their audiences. All in all, the campaign garnered:
And perhaps nuttiest of all? All of this was achieved with $0 media spend.
Ready to get your work recognized on a global stage? Enter The Drum Awards today. Need more inspiration? Read our Award Winning Case Studies.
Dentsu Creative New York
Dentsu Creative is a global creative agency network designed to unlock exponential growth for clients. We use Transformative Creativity as a differentiating, driving...