McCain ‘Anything Goes’

Food & Drink McCain United Kingdom

the brief

McCain has an enduring association with family mealtimes, through their longstanding ‘We Are Family’ positioning. To remain the Nation’s favourite, we wanted to connect more closely with a fickle younger generation of 18-34 year olds. Our job was to get their attention.

our insight

Delving deeper into the habits of Gen Z and their midweek meals, we discovered two key insights: firstly that they see dinnertime as a transition moment from the day’s stress (the ‘bad screen’) to feeling relaxed (the ‘good screen’). Secondly, that their mealtimes are a world away from the traditional sit-down family meal that McCain had been portraying.

The idea

To connect with this audience authentically, we leveraged these insights and launched “Anything Goes”: a socially-led integrated campaign designed to champion dinner decompression. And what better way to bring Anything Goes to life than parodying the recent trend of celebrity Creative Directors with our own incomparable new face of McCain, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’s Baga Chipz. Through content informed by native TikTok audience behaviour, we created a series of entertaining, dynamic scenes to add some Baga x McCain magic to midweek meals.

Results

High reach

We drove over 124M impressions over the course of the campaign across social – more than 50% higher than expected, driving mass awareness across the UK.

Tangible business results

This campaign contributed towards tangible business results. McCain purchases from 18-34 year olds within June 2022 were 9% higher than June 2021.

New audience

This campaign has opened up a culturally significant dialogue with a previously indifferent young audience: a valuable new market for McCain to explore and build on through future campaigns.

Awards

Social Media Awards 2023 Winner, 2 Oct 2023

Won an award for the best use of social media for FMCG in the UK Social Media Awards.