Timed to coincide with peak consumption of frozen vegetables, the new campaign comes during a period of flat growth for the category.

According to the SymphonyIRI Group, dollar sales of all frozen vegetables in United States supermarkets, drugstores and mass market retailers grew only 0.05 percent in the year ending Dec. 30, 2012, to $3.02 billion, compared with 3.3 percent growth in dollar sales in the year ending Jan. 1, 2012.

Dollar sales of Birds Eye, which generated almost one-quarter of all 2012 dollar sales, declined 1.1 percent last year, compared with a 3.4 percent drop in dollar sales by Green Giant, which generated 18 percent of all dollar sales, the SymphonyIRI Group also said.

Birds Eye, a brand of Pinnacle Foods, previously worked with the New York office of TBWA, part of the Omnicom Group, which last year created new advertising that depicted a vegetable harvest at a picturesque farm in the midst of a snowstorm, urging viewers to “discover the wonder of Birds Eye.”

The latest campaign, by the New York office of BBDO, another Omnicom unit, shows how mothers — in this case, mothers of dolphin, wolf and bear families, brought to life through the use of voice-overs — complete family meals by serving Steamfresh Chef’s Favorites side dishes. These dishes contain bite-size pieces of foods and are aimed at families with children age 6 to 11.

Rodrigo Troni, senior vice president for marketing at Birds Eye, said the brand — which was bought by Pinnacle Foods, owned by the Blackstone Group, in 2009 — had decided to switch to BBDO, which also works with Pinnacle Foods’ Duncan Hines and Vlasic brands, “to consolidate with one major agency.”

Although the TBWA campaign “helped the category show how relevant it is, that it’s always vegetable season,” Birds Eye now wants to “connect with consumers in terms of usage,” Mr. Troni said.

To that end, the three new 15-second TV spots are based on research by Birds Eye that found that “moms have an everyday dinner dilemma,” Mr. Troni said, adding they “want to serve a complete meal more often, a meal that’s nutritionally better, tastes great and is emotionally satisfying for the mother, who doesn’t have time to cook.”

To illustrate this concept, Tim Bayne, an executive creative director in the New York office of BBDO, said the agency had decided that instead of depicting a human family at a dinner table, “watching them react to delicious vegetables, which we’ve seen a thousand times, we thought we’d just have fun with the family part. We needed carnivores that had a little cuteness to them, the kid animals had to be cute.”

One spot depicts a dolphin family underwater, with the mother saying she was considering serving rotini and broccoli with cheese sauce with fish for dinner.

In another spot, a bear family fishes for salmon in a river; the mother says she will serve Asian medley with it for dinner. A third spot features a wolf family, in which the father asks the mother what she is serving with chicken at dinner that night; she replies potatoes and green beans.

All spots end with the announcer urging viewers to “turn vegetables you want to serve into vegetables they want to eat. Birds Eye, now dinner’s complete.”

They will appear, starting on Feb. 4, on cable networks like the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, Lifetime, OWN, TBS and TNT. Similar digital advertising will break in March.

Mr. Troni said the budget for the new campaign would exceed $10 million through 2013. According to Kantar Media, the brand spent $17.6 million on advertising in 2011, and $6.4 million in the first nine months of 2012, compared with $11.4 million in the same period in 2011.

Green Giant spent $13 million in the first nine months of 2012, up from $9.8 million in the same period in 2011, Kantar Media said. Green Giant introduced a major new campaign late last year.

Birds Eye’s advertising received mixed reviews from industry observers.

Patti Williams, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, called the campaign a continuation of the brand’s recent efforts to promote healthy eating by children through an agreement with Partnership for a Healthier America and collaboration with “iCarly,” the Nickelodeon show.

Birds Eye, she said, is recognizing that “parents know they need to make healthier food choices for their children and that they continue to find that a challenge.”

Tom Meyvis, an associate professor of marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University, said he doubted that “parents would find the ads credible” because “kids are not so excited about eating steamed vegetables.”

He added: “A better approach would be to connect to reality at the beginning of the ad, with kids bored with their vegetables. They could then show a meal complete with vegetables, now with the kids excited.”

Larry Finkel, director of food and beverage research for MarketResearch.com, said that although the new spots “pepper in a kid-pleasing product, with characters with funny voices, the agency did an amateurish job in execution.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/business/media/vegetables-in-winter-served-family-style.html?partner=rss&emc=rss