Turning Insight into Great Ads? Müller’s Got It Licked

Müller’s new masterbrand campaign from VCCP, “Love Every Bit”, celebrates the little rituals people have around the dairy brand’s products, from milkshakes Müller Frijj to chilled snacks like Müller Rice. The highlight is this week’s Ad Of The Week pick for yoghurt product Müller Corner, in which a teacher is dying to lick the lid of her pot but nervous about what the kids will think – until she sees one of them doing the same.

At 4.1-Stars on Test Your Ad the ad is Müller’s strongest ever, a real highlight in a category that doesn’t produce many high-scoring ads (this is only the second one we’ve ever tested). It’s great to see an ad that’s unafraid to be a little weird and play with negative feelings like embarrassment before resolving them to viewers’ delight.

Like all the ads in the “Love Every Bit” campaign, “Teacher” is based around consumer research – Müller drew inspiration from true stories and examples of the quirky ways people eat Müller products and the real-life rituals they enact. As you’d expect we are big fans of brands using research to inform creative work – creative testing with real audiences helps brands create with confidence, taking them out of the marketing bubble and resetting their ideas about what people actually respond to.

But using consumer insight to feed into ads – which is what Müller are doing here – is not an automatic road to success. Simply plonking examples of people’s behaviour or language into a script and filming it can end up feeling forced and flat. Raw insights may be relatable, but that doesn’t make them interesting or entertaining – for that, you need great execution. And that’s where Müller and VCCP shine here.

“Teacher” is a terrific example of what Orlando Wood talks about in his Look out book – making ads come to life by using character, incident, and place. Here we have a character we immediately want to sympathise with – a young teacher in front of a group of kids. We have place – a classroom at break time. And we have incident – the decision of whether to risk licking the lid. It’s turning the insight “people like to lick Müller Corner lids” into a moment of tongue-in-cheek but real drama. And it’s a showcase for what creatives can do to make magic out of insight.