Let’s Hand It to Miracle-Gro and “The Glovers”

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In the battle for attention, the gloves are on for Miracle-Gro. Their new brand platform shakes up the UK Home & Garden sector with a delightful debut for a pair of brand characters. Moe and Gaz are a father-and-son team of animated gardening gloves with a mission to make gardening (and life) a bit easier for Britain’s gardeners.

The ad, by agency Girl&Bear, is a wonderfully silly comedy in the great tradition of Fluent Device characters. Eager young Gaz and his wise Dad Moe offer a weary gardener a helping hand and get stuck in with planting and watering – though there are mishaps along the way with a hose and an eager dog! The Glovers (as the pair are known) are voiced by comedians and their personalities come across immediately to the audience.

Why should a gardening products brand bother with creating animated characters, though? The results of Miracle-Gro’s ad on Test Your Ad Pro speak for themselves, smashing through the category norms to become one of the best Home & Garden ads we’ve seen.

In our two key predictive metrics, Star Rating for long-term business impact, and Spike Rating for short-term sales boosts, The Glovers grab two Exceptional scores. Only 1 in 200 ads in this category hit a 5-Star Rating, so the 5.3-Star score this ad achieves is truly remarkable.

These effects are exactly what Fluent Device brand characters like The Glovers are designed to achieve. Orlando Wood’s work on Fluent Devices has proved that ads and campaigns which feature them are considerably more likely to drive business effects. They’re also a prime way to build creative consistency, by developing a long-term brand asset that also makes recognition of the brand easier and happier over time.

Brand characters appeal across generations and genders. In our new look Test Your Ad Pro report we offer a demographic breakdown of an ad’s appeal, looking at men and women and at 18-34, 35-54 and 55+ age groups. While the base sizes here are low, it gives an at-a-glance indicator of where an ad’s weak points might be. Except in this case, The Glovers get 5-Star scores for men, women and every age group, proving the universal appeal of these new Fluent Devices.

The other thing you can spot in the demographics report is that the Brand Fluency for the ad – rapid and accurate brand recognition – rises sharply with age. It’s exceptional for the oldest viewers but low for the younger ones. It’s obvious why that is: very few young viewers will need to think much about gardening, so they won’t yet be familiar with Miracle-Gro. But this is the genius of the Fluent Device strategy – by creating brand icons like the Glovers, the brand can make itself fluent to people who won’t become buyers for years or decades. It’s the kind of long-term creative thinking that makes brands great.

The benefits of Fluent Devices are clear, but in most cases they take time to bed in as viewers get used to them. So it’s a great sign that The Glovers are a big hit from the very beginning, entertaining audiences and making them laugh in their debut ad.