Honey Maid’s “This is Wholesome” Campaign

Honey Maid graham crackers are a childhood staple. However, the brand has been growing its consumer base by using an unusual approach. Its “This is Wholesome” campaign depicts a variety of nontraditional families enjoying its products in the form of s’mores, in milk, and with honey. The families include same-sex couples, a punk rock family with tattoos, an East Asian family, and others. The message conveys an expanded definition of the traditional American family and is clearly marketed to people who either view themselves as being a part of such families (either because of friends or relatives) or as strong supporters of expanding the definition of family.

The advertisement’s images, however, other than the fact that nontraditional families are used, are fairly heartwarming and gentle. They include children playing drums with their parents and a baby sucking on a bottle as well as the children making food with their parents. This serves to reinforce the normalcy of these family units. The social groups represented in the advertisement appear to be largely from an upper-middle-class income bracket, based upon the nice, attractively-furnished homes in which they reside (even the punk family with the tattooed father has an expensive drum set and family living room).
The upper-middle-class family demographic with children, residing in the suburbs, is presumably the target consumer persona for the advertisement, given that higher income individuals tend to be better educated and have a more expansive view of what constitutes a family unit. According to a recent Gallup poll regarding gay marriage, perhaps the most controversial family unit represented in the advertisement: “For people with a post-graduate education, 79 percent approved compared with 53 percent of people with a high school education or less” (McCammon, 2017, par. 10).

Of course, it could be noted that according to the poll, even the majority of individuals based upon income and education who traditionally opposed gay marriage now support it. This suggest that support is becoming more mainstream, and companies like Honey Maid have less to lose, economically speaking, by supporting less traditional families. Consumers who may oppose it are in the minority and may be more lukewarm in their enthusiasm to actively oppose gay marriage through avoiding the product. Honey Maid is not a high-end product (it is not organic, imported, nor does it have a great deal of social cache). It is a standard comfort food that is enjoyed by children. By positioning itself to attract consumers from a higher income bracket, it can retain its traditional base with more middle-to-low income consumers and perhaps encourage higher-income consumers to switch back from pricier, trendier alternatives.

The advertisements both violate and reinforce cultural norms. In terms of violating such norms, the advertisement shows families which are not the standard white, middle-class, heterosexual family units. But all of the activities the families are engaged in are very traditional, such as bottle-feeding infants, feeding children breakfast, and parents playing with children outside and inside of suburban homes. The message communicated by the advertisement is that family is the most important thing in the world and children are and should be the center of a parent’s world. Children’s appetites are also given focus, as parents make s’mores and pour milk in breakfast cereal. It is suggested that feeding children sugary graham crackers is part of wholesomeness and bonding with the family by implication, again giving added resonance to the brand image.

Cultural norms are violated in unexpected ways in the sense that the advertisement does show men as nurturers. This is seen both in the same-sex couple and also in the punk rock family, where fathers show tenderness to their offspring. In many advertisements featuring homemaking and children, only women are depicted as engaging with their children in the kitchen. If men are pictured, it is solely as a force of incompetence rather than competence. But in these advertisements, both men and women are shown enjoying playtime with children. Although there is clear product placement because of the centrality of food, the families are shown engaging in other activities, such as running around the yard and making music. Again, this could serve to address concerns about the food’s nutritional quality that some upper-income demographics might have. Honey Maid is depicted as a fun treat and part of a healthy, active child’s playtime, versus something decadent.

The advertisements are refreshingly free of irony and sarcastic humor. All of the families are loving and the children are shown interacting with their parents in a very happy way, even the baby who does not fuss when he is fed milk in a bottle. The images are bathed in light and are highly idyllic. This may be because Honey Maid does not wish to alienate its traditional customer base but also because it wants to show that nontraditional families can just as easily fulfill the ideas of the typical, American nuclear norm as ones made up of more traditional cultures.

Although the advertisements clearly are designed to appeal to an often-ignored group, they are thus not truly rebellious given that they simultaneously honor the norm of the nuclear family and expand rather than question it. The advertisement’s subtext is that all families aspire to this type of ideal, that all couples want children and all couples wish to recreate the ideals of their childhood, including eating Honey Maid graham crackers, which have been in existence for many, many decades. The advertisement suggests that all people should be able to access this idea of family without questioning whether the American nuclear family is worth preserving in its current form. Ultimately, Honey Maid is a product based upon selling consistency, tradition, and a manufactured ideal of childhood, even if it is attempting to expand the definition of who can fulfill the roles of that traditional family.

The advertisement, it could be argued, is thus selling the construct of family itself. And, after all, the idea of a family centered on children is to some degree necessary to sell graham crackers, which are a traditional children’s comfort food. Very few adults without children purchase or eat graham crackers and make s’mores. People buy Honey Maid because of its traditional resonance and desire to harken back to that childhood. This could also be another reason why the advertisement campaign might attract new consumers. It is possible that parents in nontraditional families might feel as if they cannot recreate these traditions and feel shut out from the continuity with their own childhoods. Honey Maid’s campaign “This is Wholesome” is a statement that they can.

A final, and perhaps obvious value the commercial is selling is wholesomeness. This is explicitly stated in the advertisement’s tagline, of course, that such families and Honey Maid are by association wholesome. And for nontraditional families, by buying Honey Maid they are gaining additional cultural reinforcement of their own wholesomeness. The value of wholesomeness is not questioned (nor is the idea that a sugary snack is wholesome). Wholesomeness is still an aspirational idea, although the ad implies that now all families can achieve it, regardless of their composition.


References
McCammon, S. (2017). Same sex marriage support is at all time high even among groups that
opposed it. NPR. Retrieved from: https://www.npr.org/2017/06/26/534443494/same-sex- marriage-support-at-all-time-high-even-among-groups-that-opposed-it
This is Wholesome. (2014). Honey Maid. YouTube. Retrieved from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xeanX6xnRU