Here's a little quiz. Would you rather:
1) Read about the benefits of a healthy diet
2) Be exposed to the startling statistics about obesity in America
3) Hear General Mills talk about how great its products are
4) Have a food fight
It's a wonderful thing when marketers take their products off a pedestal and encourage you to throw them. Which is exactly what you do at The Good Food Fight.
Of course eating right is a serious thing. Obesity is nothing to laugh at (Except for fat jokes. Those can be pretty damn funny.) But we've been lectured to about this stuff for a long time. What is so smart about this campaign by General Mills is that they realized that people are tired of the hard sell, the meaningless and increasingly confusing claims of increased healthiness, trans fats and the like.
Compare this with Pepsi's Smart Spot program, which takes a more predictable hard sell approach.
At least General Mills gives us some credit that our world does not revolve around their brands, but rather, we need a reason to care. And they trust that a fun experience will get your attention enough to consider taking a look at their Eat Better America website.
Once you get there you find a surprisingly readable and deep resource for diet, exercise, recipes, articles, and of course, subtle mentions and coupons for General Mills products. I tend to have a very sensitive BS detector for sponsored content but this passes muster because of the transparency of the brands and the depth of the content.
And the food fight. You gotta love throwing spaghetti at a taunting cafeteria lady.