Nature Valley Partners With Aphetor Games To Target ‘gen-z’

Snack bar brand Nature Valley has announced a pan-European partnership with The Aphetor Games, a new content-first sports event for influencers and content creators.

The General Mills brand says the partnership is intended to ‘strengthen its engagement with Gen-Z’.

The Games – which pits 35 well-known content creators against each other – will see the influencers compete across six challenges over a five-day period. It aims to enable the creators to publish content on their own channels and is designed to be an ‘antidote to the declining audience figures for traditional sport driven by the digital generation’s changing media consumption patterns’. 

Nature Valley will work with Aphetor as part of its European “Get Out More” campaign by co-creating the Nature Valley Splash and Dash – one of Aphetor’s main challenges – as well as working with a squad of competing creators to create a wide range of content from the event.

The brand will also work with the event organiser to develop an AR Filter Game on Instagram, which will allow the audience to ‘Get Out More’ themselves and compete as virtual Aphetors against the participating creators and win Nature Valley prizes as rewards for being active.

“Nature Valley and Aphetor share a bold vision to be restlessly innovative and culturally relevant to target the born digital generation,” said Carsten Thode, Co-Founder, Aphetor.

“Our model is revolutionising how audiences consume sports and entertainment content, Aphetor providing a blank canvas for the biggest content creators in the world to capture and distribute content across their channels. 

“Rhodes, Greece, will provide a stunning backdrop for Aphetor Rising, and the opportunity for Nature Valley to reach new audiences.”

Arjoon Bose, Head of Culture & Brand Experience, Europe-Australasia, General Mills added: “With our organisational focus on bold brand building and modern marketing leaning into the culture capital of today, Aphetor Games with their disruptive model and vision of creating ‘the outdoor Olympics of content creators’ grabbed our attention. 

“The partnership will genuinely enable us to inspire the digital native to ‘get out more’ which is our ethos of Nature Valley and reach younger audiences, through the lens of their creator heroes with the positive uplifting content they crave on their go-to social destination with everyday outdoor challenges which is different from traditional sports. 

“Working with the pan-European creator squad will also serve as a future-forward experimentation to drive relevance and reach as a regional digital ecosystem for the brand for the first time.” 

Aphetor Rising in Rhodes is the second Aphetor event, after a UK pilot event took place in Snowdonia, Wales, in September 2020 between COVID-19 lockdowns. At all of its events, Aphetor has strict COVID-19 protocols in place, and the safety of athletes and staff are paramount. Three further Aphetor events are scheduled before the end of 2022.