Babybel cheese and Candy Land team up to reach millennial parents in nostalgic marketing play

Babybel is bridging the generational gap when it comes to playtime by joining forces with an iconic board game. 

The cheese brand teamed up with toymaker Hasbro and Havas Chicago to make Babybel Goodness Land, a variation on Candy Land. Players can move their Babybel pieces past Waxy Way to Milky Springs to Irrisisti-bel Island to reach the castle. Through Oct. 4, Babybel fans can visit BabybelGoodnessLand.com to enter for a chance to win the limited-edition Babybel Goodness Land game. Fans will need to share their name, address and email, and confirm they are 18 years or older, to be eligible. 

How did Babybel land on a board game? For a week in August, the brand surveyed 1,250 U.S. parents, aunts and uncles of kids ages 3 to 12. They found that more than half of parents said they found it almost impossible to find time to play with their kids during the school year, and more than 60% felt disconnected from their kids during playtime because play is often tied to digital games that parents aren’t familiar with. But 61% of parents also loved the nostalgia that comes with board games, and once parents get kids to try the board games they loved as children, almost 80% end up playing them with their kids over and over again.

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“A large portion of our customers are millennials and as they become parents, we started to think about the different experiences millennial parents are having versus their own parents,” said Eileen Pedersen, brand manager for Babybel U.S. “It was originally a hypothesis that it must be challenging as a millennial parent to not have that connection at playtime when kids play digitally or on their own. So we wanted to do the survey to see if that was true.”

The board game is the latest in a streak of nostalgic campaigns over the last few months. Feeling the pain of inflation and higher prices, consumers are being more selective in their spending, so brands are looking to past connections to win some of those dollars. PepsiCo’s latest football ad stars retired NFL players, while McDonald’s Grimace Shake and As Featured In meal pull from the fast food chain’s history. Country Crock ads have also focused on a simpler time, and fans are also flocking to movies that play on nostalgia, including “Barbie” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”

Also read: Behind McDonald's Grimace Shake marketing play 

To promote the board game, Babybel is partnering with actress Busy Philipps, who is known for her roles in late 1990s television shows including “Freaks and Geeks,” “Dawson’s Creek” and “ER,” as well as “Cougar Town” in the mid-2000s.

“For millennials, Busy is herself nostalgic because she was on Dawson’s Creek,” said Pedersen. The brand has also worked with her before, including with a back-to-school campaign in 2020.

Candy Land was created in 1948 by Eleanor Abbott, a retired schoolteacher who contracted polio. Surrounded by children who were suffering from the same disease, she created a game to help them pass the time. 

Babybel isn’t the first brand to collaborate with Candy Land. In recent years, versions of the board game have been made for Lucky Charms cereal as well as accessories and bags brand Stoney Clover Lane, while a digital version and pop-up were made with Werther’s Originals caramels.