McCain's secret sauce

Adam&eveDDB won the Grand Prix at the IPA Effectiveness Awards on Monday for its campaign celebrating real British families for McCain oven chips.

According to the agency’s entry (which you can read here, if you subscribe to WARC), in 2014 McCain’s grip on the market was loosening as a predilection for ‘discretionary thrift’ encouraged people to trade down to supermarket own-brand chips — McCain’s starch enemy, if you will.

Rather than relying on discounts to drive up volume sales, the brand and agency took inspiration from a 2006 paper, called ‘If Brands Are Built Over Years, Why Are They Managed Over Quarters?’, and resolved to reduce price elasticity by investing in emotional, brand-building advertising.

The creative work, beginning with this ad in 2015, departed from aspirational depictions of the middle class to show unvarnished vignettes of diverse families eating dinner – the joyful reality of family teatime, as the strategic platform was called.

McCain kept this message and style consistent – while adopting a 60:40 split in budget between brand advertising and activations – and between 2015 and 2023, ad awareness almost doubled (to just under 14%), volume sales increased 5% (partially aided by the Covid-19 lockdowns that forced people to stay home), and price elasticity fell 47%, resulting in a 56% increase in sales value.

If you’ve got the means and the patience to invest and wait, nothing remedies poor performance like sustained emotional brand building…when the chips are down.

Campaign of the Week /

Billy Boy, the German condom company, is taking its mission to keep people safe into the digital realm with the Camdom app.

The app locks cameras and microphones on smartphones in the bedroom, offering a new kind of ‘digital condom’ that protects people from being recorded without their consent during intimate moments,

The Camdom app uses innovation to draw attention to a pressing societal issue and also to the Billy Boy brand itself, which is much smaller and less well-known than competitors like Durex and Ritex.

Intrigued by how Billy Boy is blending innovation and social responsibility? Read our full case study to learn more about this inventive campaign and explore the lessons it offers for brands looking to make a meaningful impact. Contagious.

Search advertising is opening up /

Google’s share of US search advertising will fall below 50% next year, according to Emarketer.

If that does happen, it would be the first time that Google has captured less than half of the total spend on search advertising in the US since Emarketer began keeping tabs on the market in 2008.

The prediction comes as TikTok capitalises on people using its platform as a search engine by refining its ad placement products, and AI-powered search tools, like Perplexity, look to steal share away from Google. Emarketer.

Attend this /

Trust Passes to Most Contagious New York on 30 January are now on sale.

We can't tell you what's on the agenda yet,?but if you have faith in us to put on an insight-packed event (hence the 'trust' bit), you can book your place at our all-day event for just $600 (full price: $900).

What we can tell you, though, is that we'll bring you up to speed on the most innovative campaigns of 2024, and the need-to-know marketing trends of 2025, in a series of high-energy talks that will leave you feeling inspired and equipped to make better, braver work.

And, we're excited to be collaborating with WARC, which will unpack the latest strategic work to help bold marketers join the dots between creative brilliance and long-term commercial success.

Get your tickets here. Contagious.

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