September 16, 2024
Life Cereal is again reviving Mikey, a picky eater kid who first appeared in commercials in the early 1970s and rose to pop cultural prominence, reports Food Dive.
The spokesperson stars in a new musical commercial with a jingle that draws inspiration from the original “Mikey likes it” tagline. The creative depicting a hectic morning in a busy household also bows a new tagline, “I really love my life.”
The spot, available in 15- and 30-second cuts, is running on streamers, social media, retail media, and audio channels. Life is positioning the campaign as a brand refresh focused on messy mornings and how families can be united around breakfast.
Life’s Mikey character first made a splash in the heyday of TV advertising—becoming a fixture over the course of decades with a tagline that entered the broader pop culture lexicon. Life has searched for its “next Mikey” on a few occasions, including in 1997 and in 2019, when the character was gender-flipped to be a young girl in a campaign titled “Stand off.”
Now, amid a wave of marketing centered on consumer nostalgia, the Quaker-owned brand is bringing the spokesperson back as part of a larger refresh and with some additions, including a new tagline and musical bent. PepsiCo’s internal D3 creative agency is behind the effort.
Ads that launched on September 12 show the latest Mikey, played by Hudson Uebelhardt, as he details a morning full of mishaps, such as toothpaste getting snagged in his mom’s hair, in song. The turbulence settles when his family gathers around the dining table, recreating an iconic moment as picky eater Mikey enjoys a bowl of Life, leading his siblings to exclaim, “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” The spot closes on Mikey repeating, “I really love my life!”
The upbeat commercials have a heavily digital media plan, appearing on Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, Canela, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, Meta and SiriusXM. Life is also taking advantage of retail media through Walmart Connect, the big-box store’s advertising arm that helps brands place messages close to the point of sale with help from first-party shopper data.
Research contact: @FoodDive
