What do naked people have to do with coffee creamer?
Nestle is using the former to try and sell you the latter. It’s part of a new ad campaign for the Nestle-owned Coffee-Mate Natural Bliss, a line of naturally flavored dairy creamer launched in 2011.
Back on April 24, marketers from Nestle and ad agency 360i took over a small coffee shop, Irving Farm Coffee Roasters, on Irving Place in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The marketers set up shop in the store’s basement while naked models, covered only in body paint (a la Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue), served free coffee—and of course pushed Coffee-Mate creamer—to surprised customers. Additional models and actors in body paint sat in the cafe among the regular customers to add to the gag.
The advertisement resulting from that stunt hit the Web in full (and naked) force on Tuesday night. The video begins, “How would you react if your typical morning coffee was anything but?” The text then changes “but” to “butt.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp2mEY3QtlY&w=560&h=315]
It’s part of Nestle’s all-digital ad campaign planned for the flavored creamer. Codie Richards, a marketing manager with Nestle, told AdWeek that the one-day pop-up shop “was totally new for us” and added, “We know that consumers want something natural in their creamer.”
Well, Nestle hopes they want the natural creamer. But will Millennials — that oh-so-coveted of target audiences — want to share the naked-barista video? To that effort, Nestle will push the minute-and-a-half video, plus a 30-second preview clip, to Facebook (FB), YouTube and other social platforms in the days to come. It’s given the campaign the requisite social hashtag, too (#NaturalBlissCafé), and paid ad slots for the video will begin this month and run through September.
A spokesperson told Fortune the campaign is a way to tell the Natural Bliss story “in a cheeky and authentic way” (get it?) and is “designed to get consumers to take a closer look.”
