The competition for the American snacker's attention — and, more specifically, for the American snacker's belief that what is being snacked upon contains meaningful protein — has claimed another agency relationship.
Planters, the venerable nut brand now owned by Hormel Foods, has appointed Martin as its creative agency of record, the company confirmed this week. The assignment was made without a formal review, a process that tends to be reserved for relationships where both parties wish to pretend they are still dating around.
The appointment comes as Planters finds itself in an increasingly crowded field of snack brands attempting to claim the protein mantle, a positioning that has become to packaged foods what "artisanal" was to bread in 2009. Nuts, of course, have a reasonable claim to protein content, though one suspects the legume at the center of the Planters brand — Mr. Peanut, who is technically not a nut at all but a legume in a top hat — may require some creative positioning.
Martin, the agency founded by Thomas Wojak and based in New York, will be charged with helping the brand articulate that message. (Whether a monocled peanut from 1916 is the ideal vessel for contemporary wellness messaging remains, as they say, to be seen.)
The Planters brand has had a somewhat eventful few years in creative terms, including a much-discussed 2020 Super Bowl campaign in which Mr. Peanut was killed and subsequently reborn as Baby Nut, a plot development that generated the sort of attention that is difficult to categorize as either good or bad.
Hormel acquired the Planters business from Kraft Heinz in 2021 for approximately $3.35 billion, adding it to a portfolio that includes Skippy, Spam, and other proteins of varying degrees of processing.
A representative for Martin declined to comment on the size of the assignment.
Original story published in adage.com: "Planters hires Martin to help Mr. Peanut win the protein wars - Ad Age"