for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
An ad student Instagram account that swaps brands for calories is going viral
A new Instagram account is calling out brands on the calorie content of their products by replacing logos with hard numbers. Since launching last week, it has caught fire on the platform, attracting 80,000 followers and counting.
The account was started by two marketing students, Alessia Mordini and Rodrigo Domínguez, who met studying at Miami Ad School in Madrid. They’ll graduate next month.
“The idea came when we started to think about the problems around nutrition,”Mordini said. “Consumers need to be aware about what they are going to buy … but the calories of each product are shown in a little space [on the back]. We want to do something different. We want to contribute in changing bad habits [around] junk food,” she added.
The most popular post to date has been its riff on a KitKat chocolate bar, shown below:
As the U.K.’s sugar tax on fizzy drinks and new FDA labelling in the U.S. show, food and drink brands are under increased scrutiny over their ingredients.
Food giants like Mars, Nestlé and General Mills are now changing their recipes to make products healthier without losing flavor. Mars is investing $20 million on these new developments.
But this isn’t always cut-and-dry. Brands can also get a backlash on social media when consumers find their old favorites have a new taste. When Cadbury changed its classic Creme Egg recipe, #SaveTheEgg stormed the U.K.
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