JM Smucker Company: That Jif’ing Good and Father Nature by Publicis

Jif and Smucker’s, two heritage CPG brands from the JM Smucker Company, are taking a quirky route to try and win consumers over. Peanut butter brand Jif is going a sci-fi route while fruit spread brand Smucker’s is having fun with Mother Nature.

For Jif, its ‘That Jif’ing Good’ campaign shows just how far people could go for the taste of its peanut butter. The first commercial, ‘Bunker’, shows a woman running from an alien invasion. She races towards a bunker where other survivors are holed up, outrunning the War of the Worlds-like alien craft, but when she gets there, she sees that their emergency stockpile of peanut butter is generic. Not content to stay safe but without her coveted Jif, she bolts to an abandoned store where she revels in a spoonful.

In ‘Squirrel’, a woman is sitting on a park bench making a peanut butter sandwich with Jif. She throws a morsel to a gathering band of squirrels. As the squirrel gang reaches ridiculous proportions, a man in a squirrel mask shows up, begging for “Jif, Jif” in his best squirrel-speak.

Smucker’s shows that ‘Father Nature’ is a regular dad trying to feed his daughter healthy and flavorful treats. In ‘Kitchen’, the daughter, sitting in a verdant kitchen where creatures roam freely, asks her father for a snack. He rummages through the refrigerator until a seal, assumingly cooling off in the icebox, nudges a jar of Smucker’s Natural Strawberry fruit spread towards him. Mother Nature, who is “at work”, shows her presence by snowing in approval.

‘List’ shows Father Nature shopping with his daughter, assigning birds to get his goods from the aisles. When he almost accidentally chooses a generic strawberry jam, Mother Nature chimes in by downing a light pole outside with lightning and crashes it into a parked car. Father quickly rights himself with a Smucker’s Natural jar.