Published on
July 29, 2024
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Welcome to the Breakdown, a weekly roundup of the best real-life marketing examples, created for marketers and agency folk that want to create work that actually works.
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Sike.
Man, this is good stuff. The kind of work that feels like it was dreamt up in some late-night, last-minute delirium.
The marketers at Lynx noticed that a lot of people online were talking about how Arsenal’s new away kit looked quite a lot like the infamous Lynx Africa.
(If you don’t know why it’s infamous, (1) you’re very lucky, and (2) imagine an all-out vanilla-themed assault on your senses. Like a Paco Rabanne One Million fragrance but for teenagers).
So, upon noticing this, they got to work. How to celebrate this coincidence - update the packaging? Launch an expensive collab with Arsenal?
Nope.
The real answer: Do nothing. And then make an ad about how you did nothing.
It’s low-hanging fruit, sure. But I’ve missed this kind of irreverent marketing (outside of gambling companies). Before you scream “But Liquid Death!” at your computer, think about how many LinkedIn “commentators” would do the same thing, and then rethink it.
I don’t know, it just feels like self-aware humour is fairly uncommon in advertising. Even the way that the voiceover artist raises his voice a little when announcing “Lynx Africa Away Kit Edition”, as if it’s a question, is just funny. And sometimes you just have to make a thing because it’s funny - rather than make a thing funny because it might score you more points in pre-testing.
Yes, I would do literally anything for a free Greggs sausage roll.
Monzo and Greggs teamed up to create a sausage-roll-dispensing ATM.
An ASRM, if you will.
The machine, which popped up on a wall in Newcastle, is ringing in an era of collaboration between the two brands, where Monzo Perks or Monzo Max users get a free weekly treat from Greggs with their subscription. At a time when the Pret subscription has shrivelled into a sad shadow of its former self, this feels pretty welcome.
The idea was born from Monzo data that showed that 2.3 million people spent more than £70m at Greggs in 2023. I’ve done the maths for you - that’s about £30 per person.
Going a step further, if we imagine that many of those people went in just once, and bought 4 sausage rolls (a pretty typical order), then using a log-normal distribution and a few arbitrary guesses we can calculate that the highest spend at Greggs by a single person in one year could be more than £850.
Who said you’d never use high school maths in your later life?
Well, they’re right, because I have no justification for why I bothered with this.
Back to the work - this is a cool activation. It ties in with Monzo’s recent brand campaign (an ‘Out of order’ ATM labelled ‘Money’ sat next to the ‘Monzo’ coral pink one), it ties in with Greggs (a beloved institution born in Newcastle), and it ties in with Monzo’s roll-out of a new set of product tiers. Harmony all around. Plus free crack sausage rolls.
It took me 12 minutes to come up with that headline.
Ok, quick history lesson. Back in 1991, McVitie’s went to court over whether Jaffa Cakes were a biscuit, or, in fact, a cake. The reason is that VAT is payable on chocolate-covered biscuits, but not on chocolate-covered cakes. The court ruled that they are cakes, and that was that.
And then, in a very British turn of events, people kept talking about it for 20 years.
Which brings us to today, where Jaffa Cake have decided to tell us, once again, that they’re cakes. Some ‘provocative’ OOH leads the way, with some social videos basically repeating the lines. The best of the bunch is a two-part billboard:
Yeah, it’s pretty funny. And I do very much like the idea that Jaffa Cake as a brand is slightly unhinged and ready to scrap at a moment’s notice. But I’ve got to ask, why now? Does stoking this debate do that much for sales? I mean, if you take the share of mind mode of thinking, then yes of course it does. But like the Cornish pasty fiasco, or the YANNY/LAUREL conversation, or the blue dress / white dress debacle, do we all just get sick of trading blows over this stuff again?
Meh, probably not. Everyone loves a good, gentle argument over a cuppa and a VAT-applicable milk chocolate digestive.
And not through sea-sickness.
Honestly, I quite like this ad.
It’s called “Run a Tighter Ship,” and it’s fun, very message-oriented, and well-crafted.
But for the life of me, I cannot get over my general distrust of Amazon.
Am I the weird one???
Is it a sign of some kind of conspiracy-theorist mindset that I can’t watch an ad like this without thinking of the worst of capitalism? Well, I don’t care. Like I said, I like the ad. Pirates are cool, paperwork isn’t cool, and ‘running a tighter ship’ is maybe cool I guess.
Apparently. But I’m a Fage man at heart.
Müller have got themselves a new brand positioning for their Müller Light range. Headed by the line “Get the good going”, they’ve got plenty going on, from a new TV ad to some refreshing OOH work.
I’ll start with the negatives. Because it’s always nice to end on something nice. I’m not a massive fan of the TV ad. I feel like the “I made a specific choice about a product I bought, so now I feel epic!” thing is a bit… tired. After the MoneySupermarket ads from the noughties, aren’t we over it?
But now for the nice things. I LOVE the OOH. It’s gorgeous. I have no idea what it means to “get the good going”, but the hypnotic, pastel, almost thick and tactile design work (which fits the product oh so well) is just so effective. I also quite like the sheer innocence of the idea (maybe called an “insight” on some slide somewhere in the ether) that Müller Light is a smart, healthy snack switch. The thinking feels very noughties itself, but without the diet-culture hangups.
This is the kind of idea that anyone could come up with (not an insult). The lesson here is all about execution. You see these kinds of bright, friendly, pastelly ads all over the shop, but so rarely does it fit so well with the product and the brand. Looking at the OOH work feels like eating a Müller Light, if that makes any sense at all.
That said, I do prefer the “love every bit” ad featuring the teacher for regular Müller. That’s a banger.
…stuff. They’re still running, don’t freak out.
To promote their folding phones (the Fold and Flip series), Samsung took over Old Street tube station in London, renaming it Fold Street. In truth, that station is a nightmare to navigate anyway, and messing with the signs must have left more than a few tourists confused.
Anyway, the brand renamed the station, and nearby they folded a bus, a telephone box and a lamp post.
I, uh, really have little else to say. They folded some stuff.
Seriously, though, I like the single-mindedness of the idea here. Samsung had one thing, one word even, to get across, and they did just that. But I think the bench might have been one too far, honestly. Cities can be fairly short on seating options - and folded bench is literally half as useful as an unfolded one. The rest are pretty cool though.