WATCH: OPRAH HAS THE CHEESE-PULL DOWN IN HER NEW PIZZA AD
Credit: Oprah Winfrey
If Oprah Winfrey’s love of pizza doesn’t seem quite as genuine in new TV ads as her meme-worthy love of bread, it might be because some of the dough in the pizza she’s promoting is made from cauliflower.
“It’s comfort food that loves you back,” Winfrey declares in spots for frozen pizza, the newest item in the “O, That’s Good!” line marketed by a joint venture between Winfrey and Kraft Heinz called
The prepared foods line, which debuted in 2017 with refrigerated soups and side dishes, sneaks vegetables into traditional comfort foods in a twist to make them a bit more health conscious. In the pizzas, one-third of the dough is made with cauliflower puree.
TV commercials hitting next week feature Winfrey delivering a pretty straightforward product introduction and come from agency Velocity OMC, with director Dewey Nicks. The 15-second and 30-second spots are a far cry from her overly enthusiastic spot for Weight Watchers in 2016, when she memorably declared in a commercial, “I love bread” and said she eats it every day.
The social media work is designed to resonate more directly with Winfrey’s fans. In a video posted on Winfrey’s Facebook and Twitter pages she displays a more bread-like feel, as she unveils the pizza and gets that made-for-a-commercial cheese pull just right, garnering oohs and aahs from unseen onlookers — and then does a little happy dance.
It’s a return to frozen pizza for Kraft, which sold its pizza brands including DiGiorno to Nestle in 2010. Now Urban says frozen pizza, with roughly $4 billion in annual sales, is an attractive space for people looking for comfort food and an attractive category for Kraft to go after.
“One of the tenets of the business is that we are comfort food with a twist,” says Urban. “We are category-agnostic.”
The line is meant to provide a balance between taste and nutrition, he says. It’s not as indulgent as mainstream frozen pizza, but might deliver a heartier taste than the lower-calorie pies on the market.
Urban calls cauliflower “a very blank canvas” that blends well with other foods. For example, it also appears in the line’s mashed potatoes. Ads make it clear that even with replacing some of the crust with cauliflower, the pizzas include less than half a cup of vegetables per serving.
For Winfrey, the pizza launch is the latest in a series of food-related moves, including her board seat and stake in Weight Watchers, which she also markets. And last month, she announced a stake in restaurant chain True Food Kitchen.
The best-selling soup in O, That’s Good’s first year was broccoli cheddar, in which butternut squash replaces some of the cheese, and the best-selling side was original mashed potatoes, which substitutes cauliflower for some of the potatoes.
The campaign also includes radio, digital, social and in-store pushes for the pizza, soups and sides. Along with the pizza, the company is introducing two more soups, Chicken With White & Wild Rice and Roasted Corn Chowder, and two new sides, Sour Cream & Chive Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli Cheddar Rice. It has also discontinued two pasta products.
Along with Velocity OMC, agencies on the project are Starcom for media buying and Olson on PR and influencer work.