The Good Food Fight
- Brand
- EatBetterAmerica
- Year
- 2007
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- CP+B
- With
- Mono
Objective
General Mills launched the EatBetterAmerica initiative in September 2007 and wanted to talk about healthy eating without sounding like another lecture from a doctor or nutritionist. Working with agency mono, the brand set out to make the subject fun instead of dutiful, using that fun to pull people toward the recipes, diet and fitness content on EatBetterAmerica.com. Built-in shareability was part of the brief from the start, since word-of-mouth was meant to carry the site.
Solution
On thegoodfoodfight.com, the player first picks a weapon from three real EatBetterAmerica recipes, each with its own joke combat stats, then chooses which of three rival "grubslingers" to take on. The screen settles into what looks like an ordinary recipe page — until the chosen character bursts onto it, live-action footage striding across the interface and lobbing food straight at the viewer while talking trash. Every dish thrown in the fight matches an actual recipe on EatBetterAmerica.com. A session ends with "ambush a friend": the player sends a link disguised as a healthy recipe, and whoever opens it gets pelted with virtual food and pulled into a fight of their own, with a direct hop from there to EatBetterAmerica.com.
- 1
The player lands on a food-spattered homepage that signals this is a food fight, not a nutrition lecture, and is invited to pick a weapon.
- 2
The player chooses one of three real healthy recipes as a food weapon, comparing joke combat stats like splat factor, stainage, and hurlability.
- 3
The player picks an opponent from three "grubslingers": school cook Ruthless Ruth, martial artist Sake Tuya, or hot-dog vendor Chuck Frank.
- 4
A calm recipe page from EatBetterAmerica's real catalog gives way to a live-action food fight: the chosen character walks across the page, hurls food at the screen with taunts, and splatters the page in return for whatever the player threw.
- 5
After the fight, the player can "ambush a friend" by emailing a link disguised as a healthy recipe; when the friend opens it, they get pelted with virtual food and pulled into their own fight, extending the chain.
- 6
The session ends by pointing the player to EatBetterAmerica.com, home of the actual recipes plus diet and fitness content.
