As Christmas ad season is in full swing, I speak to the planning and strategy team from McCann Manchester, the agency that created Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot.
What we cover in this episode:
- Why Darren and Jamie bring a life size Kevin’s to meetings
- The benefit of doing strategy as a pair
- Convincing a sceptical customer to shop at Aldi for Christmas
- Taking inspiration from John Lewis the reigning king of Christmas
- How the humble carrot being the big idea
- Selling the idea into Aldi
- Why they didn’t want to recreate a brand new campaign every year
- The challenge to beat Kevin every year
- Inspiration from light entertainment and why’s its harder than it looks
- Sticking to what works whilst always finding ways to keep it fresh
- How to balance Christmas, a cost-of-living crisis & Christmas
- The importance of entertainment even in tough times
- Jamie & Darren rate this years crop of Christmas ads
- Beating the benchmark Coke Truck Index
- How Kevin successfully leverages the Long and Short of it
- Using System1 testing to screen for early stage ideas
- Why the simplicity of the System1 metrics are so important
- The case for testing a 4 min long animatic
- How media is like renting a stage upon which to put on a show
- The astonishing business results delivered by the Kevin campaign
- Proving that being cheaper doesn’t mean you can’t be better
- The power of combining fame and consistency
- Wear in vs wear out on the System1 Test Your Ad database
- Why we are over familiar with our own work vs the audience
- How little attention advertising actually gets
- The power of jokes you know the punchline to
- Being lovably pirates rather than the navy
- The powerful purpose being Aldi’s mission to make good food affordable
