Ocean Spray Excite With Cranpus Character

Santa Claus, Rudolph, the elves… it may seem as if holiday commercials have explored every possible Christmas tradition. But there’s one festive story ads haven’t gone near – until now. Ocean Spray’s new ad with agency Piggyback brings us The Cranpus, a Krampus-like creature with fearsome horns (and an even more fearsome singing voice). And just as the Krampus takes gifts away from naughty children, the Cranpus’ mission is to steal all the holiday cranberries from… well, everyone.

Over the course of several entertaining vignettes, we see the Cranpus swipe canned cranberry jelly, steal cranberry sauce from out of a festive sandwich, and of course make off with plenty of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. If he can’t have the cran, nobody can, and he even shatters the glasses of cranberry cocktail at a karaoke bar.

The ad stands out as a darkly funny, slightly edgy take on traditional holiday advertising with a very charismatic lead actor in Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston (yes, the Cran joke extends to the casting – now that’s consistency). But of course it has a message to deliver too, detailing quite how important cranberry products are to the festive season, from Thanksgiving through to New Years. But how does the Cranpus – and the spotlight on cranberries – resonate with real audiences? We ran the ad through our Test Your Ad creative guidance platform to find out.

What’s noticeable about this commercial is the relatively large amount of negative sentiment it creates, alongside plenty of happiness and surprise too. The Cranpus is a wicked creature and very unrepentant of his crimes, so while most ads would tie off that negative emotion and resolve it by the end, for this one it sticks around. Even so, plenty of viewers feel surprised or happy with the ad’s dark comedy.

And there’s one very important way that negative sentiment benefits an ad. In the Test Your Ad predictive model, positive sentiment drives long term growth, but any emotional response helps drive short-term growth. For Spike Rating – which predicts short-term sales – the only negative reaction is neutrality, no reaction at all. As shown in our Cost Of Dull report there’s a huge opportunity cost created by making dull ads – and whatever else the Cranpus may be, he certainly isn’t Dull.

Test Your Ad analytics aren’t just about the long-term Star Rating, they’re about short-term predictions and making sure an ad performs well in its competitive context. That’s what’s happening here. We see an exceptional Spike Rating predicting a big sales surge from the ad (given the right investment), strongly above the condiments and sources norm.

For a brand like Ocean Spray, an FMCG that wants a highly profitable holiday season, this is the kind of metric that matters. The ad cuts through the rest of its category, and also gets a good score in Brand Fluency (rapid recognition). The Cranpus’ Christmas crime spree looks set to give Ocean Spray the last laugh.