<a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=baby%20nut"><em>Source: Google Trends</em></a>
The signal: In 2019, we saw the emergence of baby Yoda. The next baby on the block? Baby Nut.
Yep, Planters killed Mr. Peanut after 104 years. Shortly thereafter, they reincarnated Mr. Peanut as Baby Nut during an infamous Super Bowl ad, with other brand figures like Kool-Aid Man and Mr. Clean making appearances at the funeral.
Unlike Disney, which fell behind on the Baby Yoda merch train, Planters was fully prepared to monetize their new brand move, selling Baby Nut merch immediately after the big game.
Unlike Baby Yoda, who had a warm welcome to the world, the response to Baby Nut has been mixed. In addition to dividing Twitter, headlines have included “We Hate Ourselves for Writing About Baby Nut” and “Mr. Peanut had the weirdest, dumbest Super Bowl.” Reddit users have also created several subreddits hating on the little nut:
- r/crusadeagainstbabynut - 1,399 subscribers
- r/babynuthate - 261 subscribers
- r/FuckBabyNut - 93 subscribers
Even the main baby nut subreddit (r/babynut) has only 377 followers, as opposed to r/babyoda, with 87k.
The opportunity: Planters is certainly not the first to think up the “baby X” play. Besides Baby Yoda, Baby Thanos and Baby Sonic have entered the world in a matter of a few months. You can just imagine a room of big wig execs seeing the success in Baby Yoda, thinking, “Could we do this too?”
Regardless of the #babynuthate out there, we have to give Planters creds for a successful social campaign. Planters took the plunge in 2019 with a Super Bowl ad, even offering a fantasy sports package to participants. This sponsorship resulted in 4.6b earned media impressions, but less follower growth than their 2020 rendition… the story of Baby Nut.
The death of Mr. Peanut alone brought on 24k followers (without the Super Bowl). The reincarnation has led the account to grow to 136k followers. The story is similar on Mr. Peanut’s Instagram. Before the campaign, the account was sitting at around 15k followers. Today it’s at 65k -- earning ~11k followers for the death and ~36k for the reincarnation.
This story is a lesson for other brands to reinvent themselves (even if it means just reincarnating a 100-year old peanut) -- but more notably, that century-old brands need to use new-age marketing techniques. Planters rebranded, but also reverse-engineered internet success through the creation of meme pages.
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