McVities' 'Sweeetest Ever Ad Break'

The Big Idea

February saw the return of the McVitie’s ‘Sweeet’ campaign and along with it the much loved ‘Digestive kittens’. Since appearing for the first time in 2014, these guys have

made their way into the heart of the nation, so the challenge was simple; how could Channel 4 help make their return truly memorable, whilst simultaneously delivering an increase in brand consideration and awareness, the project’s 2 main KPIs. These gorgeous little things deserved a stage worthy of their cuteness…so Channel 4 came up with the idea of launching the new ad during the nation’s ‘Sweeetest Ever Ad Break’.

The only catch was that we needed to create one! To achieve this required close collaboration between a crack team including 4 Sales, Channel 4 Marketing, Programming and 4Creative along with MEC, Grey London and of course United Biscuits themselves. That’s a lot of people to please (and we didn’t have enough kittens to go around!).

Making it Happen

Channel 4 and MEC got their heads together to create a break structure along with an idea of how the two brands could interact. To ensure as many people as possible saw it, Gogglebox was agreed as the place to do it. As expected, United Biscuits loved the idea when they saw it, and we were on! The break was introduced by a lone kitten walking through a maze of C4 blocks, carefully stood on their end, knocking them all over as they walked across screen. In between each subsequent ad was a series of five second pieces of content showing the kittens playing with catnip-filled C4 blocks in a number of different ways. Finally, after all that fun and running around during the break, it finished with an outro featuring three of the kittens falling asleep around a specially built heated C4 block that encouraged an especially cute snuggly scene to end on!

This live shoot was 4Creative’s most ambitious commercial use of the Channel 4 logo to date, and was the first time such commercial access had been given to the new branding. The new McVitie’s ad was of course positioned first in the break and was followed by a number of ads carefully selected by Channel 4, MEC and McVitie’s as the cutest creative on our screens at the time!

The Results

A real-time dial test showed that the bespoke content between ads kept engagement an average of 27% higher throughout the break (vs. a standard break). This resulted in higher peak engagement not just for the McVitie’s ad, but for all of the other advertisers within the break! Spontaneous recall for McVitie’s saw an uplift of +71% whilst prompted recall was up 92%. Perceptions of McVitie’s improved directly due to the activity as there was a significant 48% increase from test vs control on the view that it is a brand ‘worth paying more for’. Finally, 72% of respondents said they would recommend McVitie’s, (+31% vs. control) whilst there was an intent to purchase increase of 13%. McVitie’s were well and truly the cat that got the cream!