Some things are always going to be cool – Saturday Night Live’s digital shorts, the choreographed zombie dance from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video and just about any project Justin Timberlake touches (loved his new movie, The Social Network).  Until now, I never would have added baby carrots to that list. But the baby carrot industry has rolled out a $25 million advertising campaign to make their packaged vegetables more appealing than junk food to teenagers.  I think it is awesome.

Carrots have never been one of my best friends.  During my youth, they were only acceptable in two forms – carrot cake and as the token vegetable in chicken soup. I zealously avoided any signs of carrots in the TV dinners mom served or on school lunch trays. Even after I became healthier, I shunned carrots for their greener cousins like broccoli, asparagus or spinach.  All of that just changed recently. Holistic nutrition coach Sandy Dalis taught me that carrots rocked as a snack. Then during a double date with our friends Joe and Jennifer Remling, Joe explained that he was tired of being a picky eater and now embraced everything. Something clicked and I decided to add carrots to my forte. Snack on the cute baby kind with fresh guacamole or hummus about every other day now.  And that brings me back to the point of this post.

Advertisers have created fast paced commercials that feel like action flick trailers for youth-oriented brands like Red Bull, Doritos, Mountain Dew and others for years. So it just makes sense to give baby carrots to same kind of treatment in TV spots like this - http://tinyurl.com/3y6lcqc. New, enticing packaging for high school vending machines has been created also to help them compete with Cheetoes and candy bars.  With the exception of the popular “Heard it Through the Grapevine” campaign for California Raisins in the 1990’s, I can’t recall seeing any other fruits and vegetables get that kind of marketing love focusing on a youth audience before. My fingers are crossed that it works.

Do you think that it makes sense to reposition baby carrots and other healthy items as “bad-ass” snacks to combat the lure of junk food?