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Tasti and Contagion dial up the Kiwiana

Despite the almost audible industry sigh whenever another campaign is released with a focus on New Zealandness—and there’s been plenty of them recently—the fact remains that New Zealanders are quite interested in themselves and their culture. And Tasti and Contagion have taken the patriotic approach to the nth degree with a campaign that features a host of Kiwi cliches, like a Manu Doll riding a whale, Goodnight Kiwi doing bombs off the bridge, leaping chocolate fish and Shrek the sheep. 

Contagion won the Tasti business in a competitive pitch earlier this year and this campaign, which is based around a competition that aims to find ‘New Zealand’s Kiwiest Kiwi’, is its first for the Kiwi-owned brand after its recent rebrand courtesy of Brother Design. 

Tasti is asking people to nominate a friend (or themselves) by uploading their Kiwiest photo to Facebook and the winner, who will be chosen by the all-knowing Rachel Hunter, gets sent on a Kiwi-saving adventure to Maungataniwha. 

“Tasti has been
cooking up treats for New Zealand since well before these Kiwi classics came on
the scene. But we are much too humble to consider ourselves an icon. This print,
social and digital campaign might go some way to changing that,” says marketing director Adrian Cook.

The competition will run as a series of homepage takeovers, with Yahoo today and NZH and Stuff tomorrow, with Facebook advertising starting on the September 5. 

“The Tasti story is fascinating,” says Contagion’s creative director Bridget Taylor. “They’ve been around since 1932 and I doubt there’s a pantry in the country that hasn’t been graced by their presence. We just need to remind people that they’re still here, better than ever and are well and truly Kiwi made. To do this we’ve taken New Zealand icons to ridiculous proportions.”

Tasti is now one of the largest New Zealand-owned and operated food manufacturers, employing over 250 people at its Te Atatu Peninsula factory. And, according to the website, the company could have kept going on like it was and letting people find out about Tasti products on their own. But it did some research and found that while there was plenty of love for the products, they hadn’t really heard of the Tasti brand.

So we told them our story and how we started out in 1930’s New Zealand with two friends building a new business in the depression. We told them we were still completely New Zealand owned, we told them we make all our bars in our own factory in Auckland, we told them we are the largest manufacturer of muesli bars in NZ and we told them we even like to help out with the Kiwi and other conservation projects.

And everyone was surprised. They couldn’t understand why we hadn’t shared such a great story. So here we are, 80 years on with a brand new look and a mission to get out there and tell people what we’ve been up to. We think our new look says something about who we are – a group of Kiwis who use the best ingredients to get the best results. There’s not much to add and we think that’s a good thing.

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