Nature Valley Commercial Critique

Commercials serve one purpose in today’s world, and that is to sell something to a target audience. Corporations spend millions of dollars trying to craft the perfect ad that will stick in the consumer’s head and maybe persuade them enough to buy the product. That product can be anything; it doesn't even have to be consumer goods, ideologies and agendas are sold just the same way through a visual argument presented to every eyeball glued to the T.V screen. The same can be said for General Mill’s ad promoting Nature Valley Oats N’ Honey granola bars. A fairly short ad that doesn't scream, “Buy our product!” but is effective in its use of location, actress and music. The subtle nuances of these elements are what make it a compelling visual argument without giving the viewer any information about the product itself. The question that needs to be asked is how honest is this advertisement about its product and the company that manufactures it, and what were the driving forces behind making an ad such as this.

The commercial starts out with a shot of a beautiful blond haired woman looking at the perfectly opened Nature Valley Bar with a contented smile on her face, wind gently blowing her hair and she takes a small bite, smiling while she chews. The golden sun shining on her perfect skin is the pinnacle of health, she is almost radiating health as she enjoys a “100% Natural” Oats N’ Honey bar. The camera then circles her face to show the evergreen trees and rugged mountains behind her as it finally gets over her shoulder and pulls back to show the beautiful Montana mountain range she’s gazing upon. As the camera pulls out further it the scene is shown to be embedded in a granola bar that is drawing its ingredients together and finally is wrapped up in its iconic green wrapper as the words “The energy bar nature intended” scrolls along the bottom. This quick and effective visual display of natural beauty was coupled with the soothing narration of a woman’s voice and the repeating electric guitar chords from the song Live Spark by Andrew Britton that gives the sense of accomplishment or possibly emphasizes the sex appeal of the model in the scene.

The main point of this ad is that eating a Nature Valley bar brings you closer to nature, because it uses 100% natural ingredients and that it’s a healthy choice. They are trying to appeal to the 20-30 something year olds who enjoy the outdoors or those who wish they could. By using the beautiful blonde model Nina Bergman they are trying to show that you can be as beautiful and healthy as she is by eating the bars. That is another point of disingenuous, there is no possible way that a nature valley bar can be eaten as portrayed, it would crumble and crunch, require a good deal of jaw movement and not many people can chew a crunchy brick-like bar such as these with a Mona Lisa smile on their face the entire time.

 The nutritional value of the bar is clearly implied by the actress used, but the overall feeling of consuming a Nature Valley bar is given by the location used and words said by the narrator. It is marketed as the natural energy bar to be enjoyed while hiking mountains, biking through forests ect. By show the majestic mountains of Montana they are appealing to the aspirations of a generation of independent and environmentally conscious Americans. There is no logic or real reasoning behind the idea that Nature valley bars bring you closer to nature, only the ambiguous title of being “100% Natural” and the marriage between the images of nature and eating the granola bar. It is this vague sense of organic-ness that sells the bar. There are many granola bars on the market, all with varying levels of industrial production involved, but the name Nature Valley is clearly trying very hard to appear to be the most nutritional and environmental conscious choice. How natural or nutritious these bars are is the real question that should be going through the minds of anyone viewing this commercial.

As to whether or not these granola bars are bad for the consumer is fairly subjective, it depends on how thorough they want to be about all the ingredients and manufacturing processes that are involved with the bar. Compared to a regular candy bar, the Nature Valley bar is a healthy choice, with only 190 calories per package, but most consumers will be sitting around, not hiking the mountains, while eating the bars. Therefore it’s misleading to market these as health bars, as respites from the modern office grind as they do in other commercials, for any extra calories while being sedentary will lead to weight gain. It does not matter whether or not these are “100% Natural” calories or artificial calories, the body doesn't know the difference. There is a difference in the terms however, a very subtle but important difference.

As Monica Eng outlined in her article for the Chicago Tribune entitled, “Organic vs. Natural a source of confusion in food labeling”, the use of the term Natural to describe a food product is directly related to the company’s desire to cash in on the growth of the Organic market while simultaneously offering a slightly cheaper version that seems the same. In her article she describes the actions of dairy company Dean Farms, which chose to roll out a new line of “Natural” yogurt. The reason that this action is seen as regressive is because the company previously had a line of organic products but the Natural brand name was a cheaper solution that would bring in more profits while devaluing the farmers that have to struggle with all the FDA regulations concerning the label of Organic.

The owner and distributor of Nature Valley is of course General Mills, the sixth largest food company in the world which markets the bars as a better-for-you snack and as such has seen their sales of said bars increase by 15 percent in 2010. This is representative of the whole foods and whole grain health fad that has gripped the Baby Boomers and Millennial’s. Nature Valley Bars have been marketed as the healthier choice for people who want to be active since its inception, but it has really found a niche now that the organic market has increased to $46 billion by 2007, when this Nature Valley commercial came out.  The term “natural” is largely defined by the producer themselves and not by the FDA. So the sources that the ingredients are derived from may be “natural” but their production still involved the use of tons of pesticides, herbicides, possibly GMO crops and other non-organic products.

Willer, Helga; Kilcher, Lukas (2009). the organic world homepage "The World of Organic Agriculture. Statistics and Emerging Trends". Bonn; FiBL, Frick; ITC, Geneva: IFOAM.