A Decade of Effectiveness for Haribo’s Kids Voices

HARIBO

Fishing

4.0

Haribo aren’t announcing it in their new ad, but 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of their “Kids Voices” campaign, originally developed in 2014 by agency Quiet Storm. If you’ve ever seen one of the ads – and if you haven’t, where have you been hiding? – you’ll have got the basic idea immediately. Adult actors act out kids’ dialogue about Haribo sweets, but with the original childrens’ voices dubbed over them.

The campaign was an immediate hit, and has proved an enduring idea for the confectionery brand, bringing to life its “Kids And Adults Love It So” tagline in an original, surreal and highly memorable way.

At System1, we call campaigns like Kids Voices “scenario” Fluent Devices. While the most famous Fluent Devices, like the Meerkats or Kevin the Carrot, are characters, repeating scenarios fill exactly the same function for a brand. They entertain via familiarity – people recognise the scenario, remember all the other times they’ve enjoyed it, and link it to the brand.

In the latest Kids Voices ad, we see two fishermen discuss how they bait their line with sweets. It’s the usual gently topsy-turvy version of reality we see in Haribo’s ads, and very typical of the campaign. On Test Your Ad, it scored 4.0-Stars – a strong result, though not one of the absolute best Haribo scores for long-term brand growth. For some viewers, even a comic reference to bait and hooks was a little unpleasant, and this likely pulled the score down.

But the other Test Your Ad metrics show the strength of the campaign – it gives Haribo Exceptional scores on both short-term sales impact (Spike Rating) and brand recognition (Brand Fluency). The Fluency score is particularly good as the ad is actually quite lightly branded – the pack appears in shot for a few seconds but otherwise not until the end. It shows that people associate the Kids Voices scenario with the brand.

A 10-year campaign is no mean feat – marketers often face pressure to change even successful campaigns, and it’s usually a mistake. Fluent Device characters and scenarios gain in effectiveness over time (Kevin the Carrot began as a 3-Star ad before ascending to his regular 5-Star level). This cumulative power, as the ideas and slogans become part of the culture, is extremely valuable for brands. Here’s to another decade of lovably strange Kids Voices ads from Haribo!

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