Published on
October 21, 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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Can we all pretend that this wasn’t the most telegraphed switch in bait history?
A little while ago, McDonald’s sent out a bunch of ‘accidental’ push notifications to their app users. It ‘prematurely’ announced the return of the McRib, with ‘corrupted’ images and ‘faulty’ landing pages once opened.
(I’m going to stop trying to write out ‘air quotes’ at this point, so you’ll just have to infer them.)
Over the next few weeks, posters appeared for other McDonald’s menu items, with what seemed like one incorrect panel (conveniently showing just enough of the word McRib to allow you to understand it, and a date). More digital glitch-craft made it look like someone had really messed up.
Of course, no one did. And I don’t think anyone thought they did (well, some people on Twitter/X bought it, but whatever).
Damn, this was a good re-launch. I feel like everyone gets uber-excited around product (re-)launches, and wants to do something special, but McDonald’s and Leo Burnett have got this on lock. Such a simple idea, with such a simple objective, with both tying up into the neatest of bows.
And not the first time they’ve done something like this - we featured another McDonald’s launch in an older edition of the Breakdown where they pulled something similar to launch a partnership with Frank’s for a spicy chicken burger. That campaign focused on FOMO for the new product - this one draws on the ‘huh’ phenomenon (I just made that up, but I think it’s real). That behavioural tick to click a button when you don’t know why something has gone wrong and it’s gotten in the way of your content consumption.
This one has been years in the making.
Ok so to be fair, Nike haven’t really gone for the mass-inclusive message for a little while. And they have always built some kind of edge into their tone of voice, and as per their namesake, they have always been obsessed with victory. But this summer, they launched a new campaign and new platform all about a slightly darker side of winning.
With a few notable exceptions (“I Am Not A Role Model” feat. Charles Barkley from 1993 comes to mind), a huuuge swathe of Nike’s big TV commercials are about feeling motivated and uplifted. The idea that everyone who competes (in any way) is an athlete is one that is, by definition, inclusive.
But starting with this ad in the summer, Nike have taken a turn:
Athletes are bad people because they win at all costs. This ad is such a perspective-pivot, but still is so motivating and still goes so hard. And more recently, they launched this campaign:
“Winning isn’t comfortable”. Victory is not always glorious and golden and met with cheers and adoration. Victory can mean staring at a single step and thinking
“Oh. Fuck.”
I’ve said it before, but I am hugely biased towards these kinds of Nike ads, ever since the banging football ones from the 2010s. They really do go so hard, because it’s so hard to not want to be the type of person who wants to win. And that’s what’s been so good about every nuance and shift in perspective they’ve had.
Nike are still inclusive. Because they never seem to really care about the people who win. They care about the people who want to win. The people who want to be the type of person who wins.
This new flavour of winning, the one with more of an edge, with an eye on the ugly side of ‘people who want to win’, works so well as a bit of a response to their earlier work. They’ve been called preachy and woke and whatever else, but this work doesn’t appeal to the part of us that wants inclusion. It appeals to a part of us that does unite billions of people across the world.
Which, for a premium sportswear brand, is about as close to marketing inclusion as you can get (as well as, you know, doing properly inclusive casting and making inclusive decisions inside the business rather than just in ads and everything else you ought to be doing).
They found that the trick worked so well, they can cut it in half and still reap the benefits.
Many years ago, someone at Greggs had the incredible and simple idea to make Greggs upmarket. Not by raising prices and adding the word ‘handmade’ to every menu item, but by having a bit of a joke with Britain.
They are a beloved brand, selling cheap, tasty, wildly unhealthy food, and with a strong cult-ish following of frequent customers and people who might buy something once in a blue moon.
I believe it started with Gregory & Gregory - a fake, posh pop-up at a food festival. The food-fans in attendance supposedly loved the new menu items available at the stall, the rest of the country loved the stunt for itself, and a fair few people undoubtedly loved the idea of some pretentious foodies having to reconcile the fact that they unironically enjoyed some Greggs food.
6 years and a few similar activations later, Greggs have opened a champagne bar in Newcastle. And by the way, that includes some champagne that costs £75 per glass…
I bloody love this. The perfect example of finding something that works, that people love and find funny, and just being consistently good at coming up with new ideas for it. A bistro, a champagne bar - at some point in the future I could see culinary courses, caviar pairings, maybe some celeb chef collabs.
I mean, having the guts to say in your Greggs activation press release that you’re “paying homage to the Belle Époque era” is just 👨🍳🤌💋