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Creative Director’s Choice: Momentum NA’s Omid Farhang says ‘bullshit free’ campaign for Vital Farms builds trust

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By Kyle O'Brien, Creative Works Editor

October 12, 2017 | 4 min read

Creative Director’s Choice gives creative directors a chance to highlight the current work they think is the best out in the ad world – the ads and campaigns they think are making a difference. Each week The Drum is featuring the words of a creative director or other top creative on the work they find funny, powerful or otherwise engaging.

Omid Farhang

Omid Farhang, CCO NA, Momentum Worldwide

This week, Momentum's chief creative officer, North America, Omid Farhang, calls out Preacher's 'Bullshit Free' campaign for Vital Farms as a shining example of how marketers and brands can build trust through honesty. See all the creative by clicking the creative works box below the commentary.

Once upon a time, the general public was able to regularly trust us marketers at our word. Boy did we screw that one up. Today, people are smacked with about 5,000 uninvited marketing messages per day ranging from the mildly misleading to the downright deceitful, raising the public’s skepticism level to red (or orange – whichever the TSA says is worse), and honing everyone’s bullshit meters.

It is set against this full-bleed backdrop of bullshit that Vital Farms, purveyors of pasture-raised eggs, unveiled its new ‘Bullshit Free’ campaign. Created by the upstart creative powerhouse, Preacher, in Austin, Texas, Vital Farms exposes the misnomer of “cage free” eggs, with piercing comedic testimonials from a farmer, and various other egg-eating folk. Blending righteous wit with downhome charm, it unmasks a misleading advertising gimmick that, sadly, more resembles the industry standard than the exception.

Were you even aware “cage-free” could be misleading before watching this thing? I wasn’t. This is a rare instance when I appreciate a piece of work less from the vantage point of a professional marketer, more so as the very consumer for which the work is intended – largely uneducated about the egg industry specifically, more mindful about how my food is sourced generally.

Vital Farms

As a member of the public, this piece introduces me to Vital Farms as a brand that not only aligns with my values, but helps me more astutely shape them going forward. As a marketer, I applaud Vital Farms for weaponizing the power of honesty to entertain while educating; it nudges us to set a stricter standard for truth in advertising, which I believe leads to more interesting, more original, more creative work that treats audiences with more intelligence. No bullshit.

Omid Farhang is chief creative officer, North America, for Momentum Worldwide.

To see the latest creative ads and campaigns, please visit The Drum’s Creative Works section. If you or your creative director would like to be featured in our Creative Director’s Choice, please contact Kyle O’Brien at kyle.obrien@thedrum.com.

Vital Farms: advert-body-1 by Preacher

By Vital Farms

Overall Rating 3/5

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