This is going to sound melodramatic, but bear with me. What is real life anymore?
Pinterest makes me feel incompetent on the crafting and home décor fronts. According to Instagram, I’m not traveling to the nicest places, wearing the trendiest clothes, or eating the best food.
In today’s over-filtered, over-documented, over-shared world, it’s hard to remember that most of life—probably 95% of life—is mundane.
And that’s why I am so in love with the new Campbell’s Soup “Made for Real, Real Life” campaign. Campbell’s bucked the trend of highlighting the picture-perfect, effortless, not-actually-real life, choosing instead to focus on moments in time that we all recognize from our own lives.
Because what is real life?
Real life is coming home after a long day, sitting down to a quick dinner with your better half, and—rather than launching into a deep conversation about politics or social issues—sitting together checking your phones in silence.
Real life is stocking up on groceries before a snowstorm, grabbing supplies for soup and grilled cheese and that ever-important bottle of wine.
Real life is parents tag-teaming and alternating the airplane move in an effort to get their son to eat dinner.
Real life is staying home sick from work, receiving little to no sympathy from your spouse, and realizing that if you want soup, it’s up to you to make it.
That’s real life.
So here’s to you, Campbell’s, for reminding us that life isn’t always perfect. Real life is hectic. It’s unpredictable. It’s messy.
But what makes that hectic, unpredictable, messy life rich and good is spending it with people you love, eating food that make you feel whole. And in the midst of the all-too-perfect images online and on TV, that’s a necessary and welcome message.
What Campbell’s demonstrates through this campaign is that advertising is at its best when it stirs up positive memories and warm, visceral emotions. Associate your product with something that makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and pretty soon, your product itself will make me feel warm and fuzzy.
