Little Baby’s Ice Cream viral marketing campaign is certainly one of the most shocking ones I’ve ever seen. This campaign uses a creepy and distasteful imagery to sell an edible product, something that could be considered a huge mistake right off the bat. Nevertheless, this edgy communication tone has led to international fame and millions of YouTube views.
But let’s talk about the product. Little Baby’s Ice Cream is a young ice cream brand based on Philadelphia. It differentiates itself from competitors by innovating with surprising flavours like green apple garlic, cucumber dill, pumpkin latte, Maryland barbecue, tamarind yerba mate and pizza. One of the company’s three co-founders, Peter Angevine, says that he came to recognize that “ice cream is a blank canvas, and you can just let your imagination go wild”. Considering the product is truly unconventional, it is understable that the communication had to be unconventional too. Below you can see the first YouTube video ad for Little Baby’s Ice Cream.
The campaign is as controversial as its outcome. It gave Little Baby’s Ice Cream international fame and sales to exhaust production but it also turned it into the most hated ice cream brand in the world. This ad is usually listed in every “the most disgusting ads” ranking. The second and most popular of their YouTube videos keeps the same creepy style and shows autophagy as the previous one.
According to its website, Little Baby’s Ice Cream is “dedicated to making the best and weirdest Ice Cream in the world” and the contact page encourages callers to “yell at us about our YouTube video/advertisement”. One might ask if this strategy will work in the long term, once the impact of the first videos has faded. Their recent videos on YouTube seem to be decreasingly popular considering the number of views they have reached.
The most recent ad seems to go in a different direction. It showcases a fountain of ice cream coming from a man’s jeans, in a suggestive NSFW way. The purpose of this new video is to announce a new packaging that is 100% recyclable.