Can you imagine being so obsessed with a tinned tomato brand, you got a tattoo of it on your arm? WiredCo’s new integrated campaign for Italian tomato brand Mutti, ‘Confessions of a Muttiholic’, explores the secret world of Australia’s most Mutti obsessed, featuring a new docuseries.
As the latest extension of their brand platform, When You Know, You Know, ‘Confessions of a Muttiholic’ celebrates the coming together of Australia’s most passionate Mutti lovers; born from an insight that when people discover Mutti, they not only love it, they become obsessed with it.
“It might sound unusual to say people have a real connection with a tomato brand, but with Mutti, they genuinely do! We’ve seen such deep love and loyalty from fans that their commitment goes far beyond the ordinary.” explains Group Business Director at WiredCo, Samantha Nunura.
And the brand’s incredible popularity locally shows in the numbers too with Mutti Australia being the fastest growing brand in the canned tomato/pasta sauce category1, stocked in over 3,200 stores nationally.
Executed via paid media (OOH, social) content, organic social and earned media, the brand’s goal with this latest campaign, was to celebrate their loyal brand lovers in an unconventional, mass scale way, thus breaking free from category norms.
To test the waters, the process started back in May via a recruitment style media push and the creation of a Confessions of a Muttiholic hotline together with a custom landing page, with fans leaving hundreds of anonymous voicemails and DMs, confessing their wonderfully passionate obsessions about Mutti.
“It was a test of sorts to mine for insights and see what we could surface. To our delight, we discovered stories like the woman who used Mutti in her skincare, the man who cracked open a can every morning like it was OJ, the bride who made Mutti the centerpiece of her shower, and the woman who tattooed a Mutti can on her arm for eternity. It proved that Mutti obsessions run deeper than we’d ever imagined,” explained Creative Director at WiredCo, Joe Stuart.
To further celebrate and unearth the brand’s most loyally obsessed, a Mutti Confessions Sessions activation was staged in partnership with Fabbrica Pasta Bar in Sydney’s CBD. Over two days, Muttiholics turned up by the thousands to show their love, and via a custom-made confessional booth as part of the experience, each Muttiholic recorded their confession and were rewarded with a delicious bowl of Mutti Napoletana Pasta.
The earned media push generated 99 media and creator hits, almost 7 million opportunities to see, and captured 190 fresh confessions on camera, giving the brand and agency a chance to meet these passionate fans in person.
“We were blown away by the response. The more we learned, the more layered it got, proving that these weren’t just made-up stories, it was real passion for the brand. So, we wanted to amplify this at a mass level.” Explained Mutti’s Marketing Director, ANZ, Samantha Filocamo.
Using the best confessions from the hotline and confessional event, WiredCo. chronicled the cult of Mutti in a fresh three-part Confessions of a Muttiholic documentary series on TikTok and Instagram. Produced by PlayLab Creative and directed by Harry Sanna, each two-minute film unearths a different confession; an artist sculpting and painting Mutti into pop art, a man drinking a can of Mutti daily, and a budding chef creating the world’s first ‘Muttinnoli’ – a cannoli made with Mutti.
WiredCo. and Mutti found themselves with so many unique stories to tell, they chose to go one step further by visualising them in a large format nationwide OOH campaign.
“We’ve always wanted to behave differently to the category, and so the idea of a big ad featuring a woman using Mutti Tomato Paste tubes as hair rollers is unexcepted and the perfect representation of people’s deep obsession with the brand.
We’re hoping this helps us drive people to watch the new docuseries and cements the Muttiholics name into everyday Australian vernacular.” Samantha Filocamo added.
