ARCHIVEPLEZi Nutrition Bets on Surreal Humor to Sell Kids a Healthier Drink
PLEZi Nutrition's "Say YEZi to PLEZi" is a 2023 integrated media campaign created by agency of record Terri & Sandy that launched the brand's first children's beverage in the United States through five surreal, humorous connected-TV spots and a series of six-second social videos designed to communicate that PLEZi contains 75% less sugar than average leading 100% fruit juices.
PLEZi Nutrition entered the US market in May 2023 as a Public Benefit Company with a stated mission to raise the standards by which food and beverages are made and marketed to children, as documented on plezi.com. The brand counts Michelle Obama and Stephen and Ayesha Curry among its public launch partners, per reporting by Little Black Book. "Say YEZi to PLEZi" followed in September 2023 as the company's first major advertising effort, making it one of the more closely watched FMCG launches of that year in the United States children's beverage category.
The campaign's creative premise rests on children — alongside a hamster and a classroom skeleton — reacting with exaggerated, sometimes surreal surprise at the unexpectedly good taste of PLEZi. The tagline, which doubles as the campaign platform, was designed to be phonetically playful: "Say YEZi to PLEZi" collapses the word "yes" into the brand name itself. Alongside the connected-TV spots, six-second social videos carried specific product claims such as "75% less sugar" and "shockingly great taste" to digital audiences across the United States. The campaign also included a planned influencer marketing phase, as noted by lbbonline.com, signalling PLEZi Nutrition's intention to build the brand across multiple consumer touchpoints simultaneously.
PLEZi Nutrition built its 2023 campaign strategy around a well-documented parental concern in the United States: children's sugar consumption.
The brand's campaign materials, as reported by lbbonline.com, highlighted research indicating that children in the United States consume an average of 53 pounds of added sugar annually, a figure the creative team used to frame PLEZi's reduced-sugar formulation as a meaningful intervention rather than a marginal product improvement. This framing is strategically important in a market where parents have grown increasingly skeptical of health claims from established beverage brands. The global children's beverages market was valued at approximately 20.67 billion US dollars in 2023, according to market intelligence cited by clapboard.com, with demand for better-for-you formulations identified as a principal growth driver in the United States specifically.
PLEZi Nutrition's principal competitive targets in the US market are Juicy Juice, the long-dominant children's juice brand, and Capri Sun, which has also introduced reduced-sugar variants in recent years. Both competitors benefit from decades of retail shelf presence and deep brand familiarity among American parents, advantages that PLEZi, as a 2023 entrant, could not replicate through distribution alone. The "Say YEZi" film campaign therefore needed to earn attention rather than rely on category authority. Terri & Sandy's strategic choice — humor and surrealism rather than earnest nutritional lecturing — reflects an understanding that parents making purchasing decisions for their children respond to brands that feel warm and energetic rather than anxious and clinical. The integrated media approach, spanning connected TV, digital, and planned influencer outreach, allowed the campaign to reach both parents in lean-back viewing environments and in the faster, more competitive scroll-based contexts where children's FMCG brands increasingly compete for attention across the United States.
Director Craig Rasmus helmed the five 30-second spots at the center of "Say YEZi to PLEZi," bringing a tone that balances accessible children's comedy with genuinely strange visual ideas.
Holiday Films served as the production company for the live-action work, with Josefina Nadurata as executive producer and Kyle Welton as line producer, per production records documented by adsoftheworld.com. Jordan Oram served as director of photography, and Jigsaw Casting handled the casting process — a notable credit given that the spots' effectiveness depends almost entirely on the authenticity and comic timing of its young performers. The decision to include a hamster and a classroom skeleton alongside child actors as reaction characters is the campaign's most distinctive creative choice. Both figures function as surreal counterpoints to the otherwise grounded domestic and school settings, amplifying the joke that even the most unlikely audience members find PLEZi's taste impossible to resist.
Sandy Greenberg, Co-founder and CEO of Terri & Sandy, explained the origins of the campaign's tagline in a statement published by lbbonline.com on September 20, 2023. Greenberg noted that the idea emerged from the simple phonetic observation that the brand name PLEZi contained the sound of the word "yes," and that the tagline was conceived to capture "kids saying 'yes' to PLEZi's amazing taste." The resulting platform, "Say YEZi to PLEZi," is rare in FMCG advertising for a children's product in that it functions simultaneously as a campaign line, a product endorsement mechanic, and a piece of phonetic wordplay that children themselves can repeat. The six-second social videos extend the same creative logic into a shorter format optimised for social media consumption, delivering single-claim messages — "75% less sugar," "shockingly great taste" — with the same playful register as the longer connected-TV spots rather than defaulting to a harder informational sell.
ARCHIVENo verified performance data for "Say YEZi to PLEZi" is publicly available. No published figures exist for campaign-attributable sales lift, market-share movement, brand-awareness shifts, or return on advertising spend, per review of lbbonline.com, adsoftheworld.com, and clapboard.com records. The campaign has not been recognised at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or the WARC Awards, based on publicly available award records.
Clapboard assigns "Say YEZi to PLEZi" a score of 63 out of 100 as an archive rating. That rating reflects a campaign that demonstrates structural clarity and genuine creative ambition for a new FMCG entrant, while stopping short of the category-redefining work that earns higher marks. The surreal humor is well-executed and the tagline is genuinely distinctive, but the campaign's impact within the archive — 2,362 views and 23 likes recorded on clapboard.com — suggests it reached a modest professional audience rather than generating the kind of cross-industry conversation that elevates a launch campaign into a reference point.
Structurally, the campaign's decision to separate connected-TV brand-building from social media claim delivery is sound planning for a first-to-market product in the United States. The challenge for PLEZi Nutrition in 2023 was not creative quality but category unfamiliarity: a new brand in FMCG requires sustained media presence to convert awareness into trial, and no public evidence currently confirms whether the campaign's media investment was sufficient to close that gap against established competitors in the US children's beverage aisle.
"Say YEZi to PLEZi" is PLEZi Nutrition's first brand campaign, launched in the United States in September 2023. Created by agency Terri & Sandy, it comprises five 30-second connected-TV spots and six-second social videos using surreal humor to promote a children's drink with 75% less sugar than leading fruit juices.
Terri & Sandy created the campaign as PLEZi Nutrition's first-ever agency of record. Director Craig Rasmus helmed the five live-action spots, with Holiday Films as production company. Sandy Greenberg, Co-founder and CEO of Terri & Sandy, originated the tagline after recognising the word "yes" within the brand name PLEZi, as reported by lbbonline.com.
PLEZi Nutrition used humor to distinguish itself from competitors like Juicy Juice and Capri Sun in the US children's beverage market. Terri & Sandy chose surreal comedy over nutritional lecturing to appeal to parents in connected-TV environments, making the brand feel approachable while still communicating its core claim of 75% less sugar than leading fruit juices.
PLEZi contains 75% less sugar than average leading 100% fruit juices, no added sugar, and added nutrients including fiber, potassium, magnesium, and zinc, per plezi.com. As a Public Benefit Company founded in 2023 with Michelle Obama among its public launch partners, it also carries a stated mission around raising marketing standards for children's food and beverages.
"Say YEZi to PLEZi" has not received recognised awards at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or the WARC Awards, based on publicly available records. Clapboard assigns the campaign an archive score of 63 out of 100, reflecting solid creative execution for a new FMCG entrant.
PLEZi Nutrition's "Say YEZi to PLEZi" ran across connected-TV platforms with five 30-second spots, supported by six-second videos on social media, as documented by lbbonline.com and adsoftheworld.com. A planned influencer marketing phase was also included in the campaign structure, reflecting an integrated media approach designed to reach US parents across multiple digital environments.
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