Once upon a time, in the aisle of frozen potatoes there was a brand called McCain. The famous household brand knew it was different gravy but needed engage people’s hearts and tummies more effectively. Beyond the nation’s love of chips, how could they make a more meaningful difference to families?
Around a million families in the UK are raising disabled children. Family Fund is the UK’s largest charity providing grants to improve the lives of low-income families with disabled or seriously ill children. McCain partnered with Family Fund, pledging £1m over 3 years to support this heroic cause.
McCain needed a media partner to help it achieve a magic trio of objectives: a brave creative idea that would highlight the brand’s distinctiveness; a means to tell the story of its partnership with Family Fund and a way to communicate the brand’s values of family “togetherness”. The connection had to be clear for the messaging to emotionally connect with consumers, and ultimately lead to more family McCain meals and moments shared.
Teatime and tucking into exciting TV content tend to go hand in hand, but many of the Family Fund families weren’t seeing their lives and struggles well represented on TV. This brief was a unique opportunity to make these families the unlikely heroes of their own stories – the stars of the content they loved and watched together.
Our real-life ‘Teatime Tales’ idea would tell the stories of three children who’d been helped by Family Fund, creating films that complemented the types of shows they’d be watching and aired at a time when they’d be enjoying their dinner as a family.
Three protagonists would each tell their own heart-warming story about the help they had received from Family Fund, and how it had enhanced the little moments of their lives: moments like coming together as a family at mealtimes.
To give their stories a voice, we recruited the beloved David Walliams to work with us in developing and narrating these three stories to inject an element of fun and magic.
It was crucial we represented these stories in a genuine way that didn’t rely heavily on involvement from the families, so animation was the perfect solution. This allowed for maximum involvement from the families and young people, for whom filming would be difficult due to their individual circumstances as well as helping us to navigate the issues of the pandemic, creating a creatively cohesive, but also safe, production environment for all.
We worked with Family Fund to create a shortlist of 10 families who were happy for their stories to be told and held a one-on-one interview with them to understand their challenges and find out which stories would translate best to TV. We selected Benjamin, Maddie and Anjola’s stories, who collectively gave the audience a sense of the breadth and diversity of young people supported by Family Fund. Working closely with McCain, we wove in genuine details that would authentically tie these stories into a Teatime narrative without shoehorning the product e.g. Anjola who is a very passionate cook and loves spending time in the kitchen with his family.
Produced by Sky Commercial Productions and animated by Art&Graft, the series of 60” animated films aired at teatime across Sky Media’s family content and channels, on both linear TV and VoD. A 30” cut down version of the 60” TVC also aired using addressable technology, through AdSmart, to reach light or non-buyers of McCain.
Our media laydown allowed us to ensure we were reaching the right audience at the right moment (teatime), but we still had to create authentic and engaging copy, working with multiple creative, production and social agencies, two clients and our most important partners – the families!
First ever kids’ TV sponsorship for Petits Filous
