Clif Bar just fired another shot in the energy-bar wars. On Tuesday, during game one of听the NBA听Western Conference playoffs between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Golden State Warriors, the endurance-food company听ran a 90-second TV ad reminding people that its products are clean and healthy and that its business practices are environmentally friendly. It came just over two months after Clif ran a full-page ad in The New York Times calling out competitors for not using organic ingredients.
Titled ,听the ad follows a man, who鈥檚 eventually revealed to be the climber from the company鈥檚 logo, biking through a cartoon town, past TV sets displaying news broadcasts of environmental disasters听and through a forest where navy blue suits cut down trees. 鈥淲hen it comes to the planet, we think we should not destroy it,鈥 he says. He ends up at the Clif Bakery, a Seussian mountaintop silo, 鈥渨here we make our rectangular food听good and nutritious, not full of poison.鈥
The whole thing is whimsical: a man in yellow socks on a red bike, elevators inside of tree trunks, doctors who give test subjects jugs marked,听simply, 鈥減oison鈥 to test the effects of bad ingredients on the human body. It鈥檚 also听clearly听a dig at the rest of the snack- and energy-bar industry鈥攏ot to mention the greater food industry as a whole鈥攖he implication being that if Clif Bar鈥檚 products are made with nonpoisonous ingredients, there are other companies out there whose听bars aren鈥檛.
According to Clif, the ad was meant to highlight its commitment to supporting communities and the environment, with the goal of encouraging other companies to follow suit. (Clif pays living wages at all of its bakeries, offsets 100 percent of its facilities with renewable-energy credits, and claims to be the largest private funder of organic research in the U.S.) 鈥淚t provided a perfect opportunity to reach lot of people with a live, tune-in audience and help them better understand our company鈥檚 values,鈥澨齭ays Dan Hickle, Clif鈥檚 vice president of marketing. 鈥淏ut we also genuinely hope to get people talking and acting in ways that lead to positive change.鈥澨齌hough not as direct, the sentiment is in keeping with the combative spirit of its听New York Times听ad from March, which explicitly challenged Kind, Larabar, and RxBar to transition to organic ingredients.
Bill Pearce, a professor of brand marketing at the University of California at听Berkeley, doubts the campaign will be successful. 鈥淚 think they spoke to their existing users,鈥 he says. 鈥淭here was nothing there that was going to bring new people to Clif.鈥
An ad like this doesn鈥檛 come cheap. According to Pearce, who is the former chief marketing officer of Taco Bell, Make It Good probably cost well over a million dollars to produce. Not to mention the premium price on听a 90-second ad spot during a major听game, plus the cost of running the ad through June.
Why has Clif put so much money into aggressive mainstream-marketing campaigns in the last few months? Hickle dodged the question. 鈥淥ur conversations with people today are consistent with what鈥檚 always driven us: our values,鈥澨齢e says.听鈥淎t a time when we need positive energy in this country, our goal with Make It Good is to inspire people and other companies to join us in taking action that makes this world a better place.鈥 If nothing else, it鈥檚 indicative of the increasingly crowded, uber-competitive snack-bar market. Established brands like Clif are now fighting against dozens of startups, all marketing their bars as the healthiest听and cleanest, in the hopes of earning a coveted place in your backpack.