Honey Maid "This Is Wholesome" Ad Campaign Analysis
This paper analyzes Honey Maid's "This Is Wholesome" advertising campaign, which features nontraditional families—including same-sex couples, a punk rock family, and an East Asian family—enjoying its graham cracker products. The analysis examines the campaign's target consumer persona, its simultaneous violation and reinforcement of cultural norms, and its strategic positioning within the marketplace. The paper argues that while the advertisements expand the definition of who can belong to a family, they ultimately uphold traditional nuclear family values rather than challenge them. The campaign is understood as selling not just a product but the construct of family itself, along with the aspirational value of wholesomeness.
- Introduction: Expanding the Definition of Family: Campaign overview and its nontraditional family representations
- Target Consumer Persona and Market Strategy: Upper-middle-class targeting and economic rationale
- Violating and Reinforcing Cultural Norms: How ad both challenges and upholds traditional family norms
- Gender Roles and Representation: Men depicted as nurturers, departing from advertising conventions
- The Nuclear Family Ideal and Its Limits: Campaign honors rather than questions the nuclear family construct
- Selling Wholesomeness as a Brand Value: Wholesomeness as aspirational brand promise for all families
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What makes this paper effective
- The analysis moves fluidly between close reading of visual details (drum sets, furnished homes, bathed-in-light imagery) and broader cultural and economic arguments, grounding abstract claims in specific evidence from the advertisement.
- The paper maintains a nuanced, balanced tone — acknowledging the campaign's progressive intent while critically questioning whether it truly challenges dominant norms or simply expands access to them.
- The concluding argument, that Honey Maid is ultimately selling the construct of family itself rather than a product, is an insightful synthesis that ties the entire analysis together effectively.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates ideological critique — reading an advertisement not only for its surface message but for its underlying assumptions and values. By noting that the campaign honors rather than questions the nuclear family ideal, the writer exposes the limits of what appears to be a progressive campaign, a technique associated with cultural studies and media criticism.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by describing the campaign and identifying its target audience, then moves into market strategy and demographic reasoning supported by polling data. The middle sections analyze how the advertisements simultaneously challenge and reaffirm cultural norms, including gender roles. The final sections develop the argument that the campaign sells an aspirational ideal — family continuity and wholesomeness — rather than simply a product, ending with a reflection on the brand's tagline.
Introduction: Expanding the Definition of Family
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 part of such families — whether through friends or relatives — or who strongly support expanding the definition of family.
The advertisement's images, other than the fact that nontraditional families are featured, are fairly heartwarming and gentle. They include children playing drums with their parents, a baby sucking on a bottle, and children making food alongside 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 on the attractively furnished homes in which they reside — even the punk family with the tattooed father has an expensive drum set and a well-appointed family living room.
Target Consumer Persona and Market Strategy
The upper-middle-class family demographic with children, residing in the suburbs, is presumably the target consumer persona for the advertisement. Higher-income individuals tend to be better educated and to hold a more expansive view of what constitutes a family unit. According to a Gallup poll on 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).
It could also be noted that, according to the same poll, even the majority of individuals who traditionally opposed gay marriage now support it — suggesting that such support is becoming more mainstream. Companies like Honey Maid therefore have less to lose, economically speaking, by aligning with nontraditional families. Consumers who may oppose this positioning are in the minority and may be relatively lukewarm in their willingness to actively boycott the product.
Honey Maid is not a high-end product — it is neither organic nor imported, and it carries little social cachet. It is a standard comfort food enjoyed by children. By positioning itself to attract consumers from a higher income bracket, it can retain its traditional base among middle- and lower-income consumers while encouraging higher-income consumers to switch back from pricier, trendier alternatives.
Violating and Reinforcing Cultural Norms
The advertisements both violate and reinforce cultural norms. In terms of violation, the advertisements feature families that differ from the standard white, middle-class, heterosexual unit. Yet all of the activities the families engage in are highly traditional: bottle-feeding infants, preparing children's breakfast, and parents playing with children inside and outside suburban homes. The central message is that family is the most important thing in the world, and that children are — and should be — at the center of a parent's life.
Children's appetites are also given focus, as parents make s'mores and pour milk over breakfast cereal. By implication, feeding children graham crackers is presented as part of family wholesomeness and bonding — adding resonance to the brand image. The suggestion is that a sugary snack can be wholesome precisely because of the emotional context in which it is consumed.
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
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