Playing off of the communal nature of sharing french fries, McCain’s latest brand platform, “Together Is Golden,” wants to send a message about the ways in which its products can bring people together.
The idea of togetherness is the core of the brand’s current positioning, and the latest platform bringing this to life launched on Friday with two hero brand spots, developed with its AOR, Rethink. The first spot, “Fry Thief” sees a grandmother bond with her grandkids over stealing their fries. The second spot “Fry Fort” follows a mother trying to entice her son out of his blanket fort with a plate of McCain fries.
McCain marketing director Mike Embir says that many other brands bring the feeling of togetherness to life the same way in their ads through families sitting around a dinner table. But he notes that there’s a lot more variety in consumers’ homes about how they connect with one another over food. He adds that consumers can often feel it’s hard to express themselves at the dinner table. These insights helped shape the new campaign.
“[French fries] is the great equalizer, a disarmer and the catalyst for bringing out those true golden amazing moments that you get around the dinner table,” Embir tells strategy.
“It puts everyone on an even playing field and allows everyone to be themselves a little bit more.”
Embir notes that the campaign follows its previous successful campaign with Rethink, “Make It a Fry Day,” which performed well in Canada. He says there was something effective there about family and emotional connection, which they used as a starting point to try and develop emotional but fun creative.
The brand plans for “Together Is Golden” to serve as a multi-year platform. The slogan was created to further underline feelings of closeness and unity with others, while also evoking the gold crispiness of McCain’s products.
“Everything that we’re doing in market is around how do we create these special moments, how do we champion these special moments,” Embir says.
“This campaign is all about acknowledging those golden moments, and really how special they are and how to create those memories for consumers that will last with them for a lifetime. That’s what this campaign is all about and how we’re going to leverage it going forward.”
The new creative assets all incorporate what the brand calls its new design language, the “McCain Shine,” which is a collection of ownable assets and video treatments to ensure its work feels specific to the brand throughout its campaigns. This “McCain Shine” includes how the ads are lit, the types of characters included and, most importantly, the offer of a french fry that’s a catalyst for a fun or emotional moment.
McCain’s new platform was supported by extensive research interviewing Canadians across the country, which led to the insights about how families experience feelings of togetherness, which influenced the new platform.
The brand’s new 360 campaign is supported by cutdowns and contextual OOH placements, which the brand invested in more heavily for this campaign. The creative will also run on TV, connected and smart TV, in cinema, OLV, on social media and via Spotify. The campaign’s launch on Friday was timed to coincide with the beginning of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Rethink is the agency behind the creative and PR on the campaign, with UM Canada handling media.
