THE CHALLENGE

McCain had long aimed its advertising at families, which led to a steady decline in relevance and salience amongst 18 - 34 year olds.

Younger Brits just didn’t see McCain as a brand that understood them or reflected their mealtimes.

For them, a chip is just a chip.

The result?

Younger consumers were turning to own-label frozen chips more often than McCain.

So how do we grab the attention of an audience that doesn't see us as a brand for them?

THE STRATEGY

Through social listening and qualitative research amongst our target audience, we uncovered two key insights:

• They see dinner as the moment of decompression amidst their stressful lives.
• The traditional rules of dinner are out the window in today’s world.

We developed a socially-led integrated campaign which embodied this message: when it comes to the midweek meals with McCain, “Anything Goes”.

By reflecting real mealtimes and encouraging younger audiences to do dinner on their own terms, we aimed to entertain and connect with our audience at this key moment of decompression. 

THE CAMPAIGN

Celebrity Creative Director hires have driven attention en masse over the last few years, from Molly-Mae Hague x Pretty Little Thing to Kim Kardashian x Beyond Meat. 

Through an integrated campaign, launched in June 2022 across social, digital and OOH, we parodied the recent celebrity Creative Director trend by “hiring” RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Baga Chipz, to add an entertaining dynamism to midweek meals. 

As our target audience spends more time on TikTok than other platforms, we leveraged audience behaviours seen on the app and native platform cues for additional cultural relevance and creative inspiration.