How Activia went from stodgy digestive aid to trendy wellness brand

But Activia has to be careful not to drive away long-time customers who first picked up the product because they related to Curtis and her digestive complaints.

“It’s a very delicate move,” said Pedro Silveira, Danone North America’s president of yogurt. “We don’t want to alienate [our core customers],” he said. “But at the same time, we have to recruit new ones.”

Activia arrives

“Not all probiotics are created equal,” said Miguel Freitas, VP of health and scientific affairs at Danone. “Experts have suggested that most probiotics have strain-specific mechanisms of action which are linked to different benefits.”

On its website, Activia says that its yogurt “may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort,” such as “bloating, gas, abdominal discomfort and rumbling,” when eaten twice a day for a couple of weeks and paired with a healthy lifestyle and balanced diet.

With Curtis as its spokesperson, Danone distilled that information to a simple message: If you want to keep your bowel movements on track, eat Activia. In commercials, Curtis explained that eating Activia helped keep her regular. Sometimes, she was joined by other women who also complained of digestive issues.

Nobody talked outright about bowel movements, but the implication was clear.

It may seem like the whole thing was a big flop. But in fact sales were soaring. “In that particular moment, that campaign was very successful,” Silveira said.

Danone didn’t see the parodies of its campaign as a bad thing, Silveira said, noting that it’s possible to “benefit” from such attention, and use it to “engage in a positive conversation.”

A few years ago, “we saw an opportunity to rejuvenate the brand,” said Silveira, describing it as an evolution rather than a rejection of that original Curtis campaign concept. Danone tested the new commercials to make sure they didn’t alienate consumers, Silveira added. The brand now points to the updated campaign as a growth driver.

“You market to what people want to be, not necessarily what they are,” said Bob Samples, executive-in-residence at Western Michigan University, where he teaches students about food and consumer goods marketing. The lifestyle in the commercials could feel aspirational to older consumers, he said. “If I market this at Millennials, I’m probably grabbing the Baby Boomers.”

The quest for gut health

As Danone evolved its marketing campaigns, more consumers started seeking out probiotics and pursuing so-called gut health.

In a 2021 report, research firm Mintel said that when asked which benefit would encourage them to try more yogurt, about 34% of respondents pointed to gut health.

Interest in probiotics really kicked off during the pandemic, said Claire Lancaster, senior strategist on the food and drink team at WGSN, a trend forecasting company.

“We saw huge spikes of the conversation around [gut health] during the start of the pandemic,” she said. “It’s gained steam since then.”

Online, younger consumers have been “calling out specific [probiotic] strains that they like to take,” Lancaster noted. “It’s become quite trendy to be hyper aware.”

Samples suggested that younger consumers think of probiotics as a kind of recovery aid, even if that may not be the case. “The mindset of a lot of young people is if I eat enough yogurt, I can have a bunch of french fries,” Samples said.

Plus, yogurt sales have been growing in general, especially through the Covid-19 pandemic. US yogurt retail sales rose from $9 billion in 2019 to $9.3 billion in 2021, according to research firm Euromonitor.

Activia is also taking other approaches to entice consumers. One example: sippable versions of Activia, sold in bottles, which let consumers drink the product on the go. In its report, Mintel said that the “yogurt drinks segment will fuel post-pandemic growth.”

Between the new ads, the new varieties and the trendiness of gut health, Activia now looks very different to today’s customers. Silveira thinks that younger Activia consumers, “were not exposed to the Jamie Lee Curtis campaign,” and won’t associate the messages in her commercials with the product.

Samples agreed that consumers generally have a short memory for things like marketing, but said they will recall a few things.

“I think everybody will remember Jamie leading the commercials, but probably not what the message was … other than a lot of people made fun of it [for being] the yogurt that made you poop.”