A new campaign from Greenfield Natural Meat Co. proves its point through production itself, capturing the action in a single take to show that the fastest route isn’t always the best one.
Developed alongside No Fixed Address, “The Hard Way” campaign features a 90-second hero video with music, sound and images all recorded in tandem, in-camera as part of its one-shot filming process. The purpose-led Maple Leaf Foods brand went as far as to hand paint the campaign’s “supers” to convey the message that it doesn’t cut corners along the path from farm to plate.
As D’Arcy Finley puts it, “when everything can be synthesized, real is a competitive advantage.” The Maple Leaf Foods VP of brand and marketing tells strategy that the decision to forego AI and other digital solutions reflects Greenfield’s “hard way” efforts to move away from the use of antibiotics and gestation crates when raising animals.
“As we champion no shortcuts in farming practices, we also appreciate no ‘fix-it-in-post’ marketing,” Finley says. “‘The Hard Way’ becomes the banner under which we show our choices: how animals are raised, what we refuse to use, and the standards we hold ourselves to.”
Finley says the campaign “encompasses the whole book” of Greenfield’s previous purpose-driven work. “The Hard Way” follows earlier efforts like the “Bacon Is Rain” campaign, which funnelled donations toward habitat restoration, and the carbon-neutral BLT activation that highlighted the brand’s “Low Carb(on) Diet” platform.
“It’s not just what we do, it’s why: if you’re going to raise meat, doing it the hard way is the right way … for animals, for people, for the planet,” he adds. “This platform lets us speak with one voice and invite people to see their own values in the brand. Less claim-by-claim, more value system in full.”
The production itself served as a metaphor for that philosophy.
Stuart Macmillan, executive creative director at No Fixed Address, tells strategy that the Les Enfants production team, led by director Thomas Soto, went through 52 takes over two days on location outside of Montreal to refine camera movements, choreography, lighting and performance cues.
He says the decision to take a literal approach to making a campaign the hard way came quickly after the creative strategy was worked out with Greenfield. Maintaining camera focus and flow across the single take was complex, he says, but Soto’s guidance to reiterate through multiple takes proved fruitful.
“Shooting the single take was really a process of constant refinement,” Macmillan says. “Constantly adjusting camera moves and lighting and talent marks and dialogue delivery and musical cues and performance notes and food styling and managing the dog and children and background performers until it all magically came together on take number 51. Just as golden hour hit.”
Avoiding AI and digital enhancements wasn’t just a creative choice but a philosophical decision for both agency and brand.
“The entire philosophy of the brand is about not taking any shortcuts, and using AI would have felt like a shortcut,” Macmillan adds. “From the very beginning we knew that we had to commit to doing this for real or find another concept.”
Two single-take 15-second films were also shot for social, with hand-painted OOH murals and additional social and digital assets rolled out in support of the campaign, which is the brand’s third U.S. national effort with No Fixed Address and. The Influencer Agency developed influencer activations and Fuse Media handled paid media.
Finley says Maple Leaf will measure success across three outcomes: “Memory,” (conveying Greenfield’s carbon-neutral commitment), “momentum” (an increase in repeated sales and households “trading up”) and “mandate” (differentiating the brand as a purpose-driven standard bearer among retailers and consumers).
