Cake & biscuits brands have baked up 14.4% growth in ad spend over the past year, taking the total spent on traditional advertising to £27.1m [Ebiquity 52 w/e 30 September 2015].

Despite a 10.12% drop in spend, UB’s McVitie’s continues to wield the biggest budget in the category. Having brought all its sweet products, excluding Go Ahead, under the McVitie’s masterbrand, it spent £5.2m convincing punters that life is Sweeet. The onslaught of fluffy animals continued with the relaunch of the McVitie’s Breakfast range in a TV ad featuring a flying squirrel delivering breakfast biscuits to a disconsolate city worker.

These cute critters have helped. In biscuits, its Digestives, Hobnobs and ‘other’ products have all added value, and its cakes are up 2.1% [IRI 52 w/e 15 August 2015]. UB’s Jon Eggleton calls that a result. “We’re currently experiencing our best-ever total volume share for sweet biscuits and it’s pleasing to see all our brand equity measures up significantly.”

McVitie’s stablemate Jacob’s also stumped up nearly £4.5m (see below), while Mondelez’s BelVita Breakfast spent nearly £3.4m; its Morning Win campaign hit TV in September. Meanwhile, attempts to revive Ryvita’s fortunes with a £4.9m spend on its two Anything Goes stop-frame ads didn’t pay off; it’s down 7.2% in value [IRI 52 w/e 15 August 2015].

MediaTOTAL CinemaOutdoorPressRadioTV
Brands Spend (£m) y-o-y% % % % % %
McVitie’s £5.2 -10.1% 0.0 0.4 1.0 - 98.7
Ryvita £5.0 66.5% 3.3 - 0.2 - 96.6
Jacobs £4.5 19.5% - 1.5 1.0 - 97.4
BelVita Breakfast £3.4 8.9% - 14.5 0.5 10.5% 74.4
Oreo £2.9 110.5% 4.4 1.3 9.1 - 85.2
Mr Kipling £1.6 52.3% - - 6.4 - 93.6
Soreen £1.5 - - - 0.9 - 96.7
Fox’s £1.2 -8.8% - - 4.0 - 96.0
Pick Up! £0.9 -48.2% - - 1.5 - 98.5
Cadbury £0.9 -54.5% - - 8.1 - 91.9
TOTAL £27.1 17.4 1.1 2.4 2.4 1.3 92.8

Here’s our pick of the most significant cake & biscuits TV ads over the past year:

Jacobs Cracker Crisps

Jacob the baker, played by a shrunken version of comedian Jason Cook, returned to TV as UB launched its Cracker Crisps with a £4.25m media campaign. The little fella has a pseudo-political dream; that cracker crisps can have all the flavour, taste and crunch of crisps. Showered in fantasy tickertape, he delivers a ‘yes it can’ manifesto. With many bagged snack players confident that biscuits can steal share from crisps, tiny Jacob is not alone in his convictions – or his baked-not-fried product launch.

Oreo Vampire (aka Oreo Wonderfilled)

To coincide with the introduction of Golden and Peanut Butter variants in August 2015, Mondelez’s Oreo brought its Wonderfilled ad, which launched in America in 2013, to the UK. The striking but cutesy animated creative imagines the good that could be done by giving an Oreo to baddies including a vampire and the big bad wolf. The £2.1m investment is pushing at an open door; the brand was up £12.1% in value to August 2015 [IRI].

Mr Kipling Angel Dog

A 52% rise in ad spend saw the Premier Foods cake brand shell out £1.6m to support its slices. Following the TV refresh of the brand in August 2014 with creative featuring a boy and a pink dancing elephant breaking cake together, Angel Dog is made by the same agency, JWT. It follows an animated dog made from Angel Slices as he gets out and about to a driving Northern Soul soundtrack. That’s cake on the go.

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