Why McCain and adam&eveDDB Stormed The Effectiveness Awards

This year’s IPA Effectiveness Awards achieved a 32-year high number of entries with 79 case studies being submitted. But at last night's awards ceremony one client and agency partnership stole the show: McCain and its creative agency adam&eveDDB emerged triumphant, winning the Grand Prix while a&eDDB was also named Effectiveness Company of the Year.

Alongside the top two prizes at the Effectiveness Awards, adam&eveDDB also won The Channon Prize for Best New Learning and a Gold award for its McCain paper; the Prize for Best Small Budget and a Gold award for Laithwaites; and Bronze prizes for TEMPTATIONS and The National Lottery.

Catherine Kehoe, chair of the IPA Effectiveness jury and Nationwide’s chief customer officer, said of the McCain entry: “This paper really matters. Charting the story of McCain through the cost-of-living crisis, it deals with some of the biggest challenges in marketing, from managing a brand in a downturn, shoring up goodwill in the face of growing own-label competition, and delivering a business-transforming impact through shifts in price elasticity,” says “A bold decision to support the brand rather than default to price promotions really paid off. If ever there was a paper to take to chief marketing officer to justify investment in advertising, this is it”

Convenor of Judges and chief strategy officer for Ogilvy UK Jo Arden said a&eDDB had "demonstrated a truly remarkable commitment to effectiveness across a range of challenges, budgets and brands – the epitome of an ‘effectiveness culture”.

In total, 28 prizes were awarded (see full list below) - five Gold, seven Silver, 16 Bronze prizes and nine Special prizes across Not-for-profit, Global, Regional and Single Market categories.

Other winners included TBWA\Worldwide being named as the Global Effectiveness Network of the Year, while VCCP client Cadbury picked up The Broadbent Prize for Best Dedication to Effectiveness and Guinness and AMV BBDO won The President’s Prize for Next Generation Brand Building.

The paper from AMV BBDO - ‘Effectiveness In Black And White: How Guinness Supercharged Growth In GB And Ireland’ - outlines the brand’s move in 2020 to take advantage of evolving consumer behaviour including the launch of its 0.0 alcohol variant, which would help it become the best-selling pint across the UK for the first time.

How adam&eveDDB Drives Effectiveness For McCain

The McCain paper entered for the IPA Effectiveness awards was entitled "When The Chips Are Down, Margins Matter: How A Focus On Longterm Emotional Brand-Building Reduced Price Elasticity and Increased Profits For McCain" and outlined the nine-year rebuild of the brand through its celebration of family teatimes.

In 2015, McCain was fighting against several challenges, not least that is main competitor accounted for half of all frozen chips sold in the UK, while consumers were searching for ‘oven chips’ over ‘McCain’ and discount supermarkets such as Lidl and Aldi were on the rise, with neither distributing the brand’s products. The meant that the business was struggling and its customer promotions were failing.

Through the brand's long-term partnership with adam&eveDDB, McCain developed a new strategy and range of objectives focusing on brand-building to grow sales profitably in a time of raging inflation, changing shopper behaviour and a cost of living crisis.

From speaking with parents, it was clear that too often advertising and the media were showcasing ‘fake, unrelatable perfection’ that did not reflect the ‘messy’ reality of their lives. This created an opportunity to start reflecting the joyful lived experience and diversity of British family teatimes and make real British families feel seen, heard and celebrated.

The move would be transformative, with the sustained investment reducing McCain’s price elasticity by 47 per cent and drive sales by 44 per cent, delivering a net profit of £26 million. At the end of this case, profit ROI was at £1.50 and on an upwards trajectory.

In addition to the Grand Prix, the McCain paper won The Channon Prize for Best New Learning and a Gold award.

Mark Hodge, VP Marketing, McCain said in the winning submission: "McCain is a global business. Through the UK’s activity, we have demonstrated in objective terms the power of long-term brand building. This has become an important case study for the global business.

At the core of this success story is the mindset shift to see brands as being built over years and decades, not quarters. This testament to long-term thinking is something that is now encouraged across markets as well as upheld in our own.

I’m proud of what we’ve achieved with our agency partners, through a long-standing relationship of trust and a shared commitment to the long-term goal. We had to be disciplined, focused and patient – but our shared belief in creative consistency and focusing our energy on the right things has truly paid off."

Will Grundy, a&eDDB's head of planning, said of the McCain case study: “The most interesting part isn’t just the incremental sales we’ve generated. It’s the way we’ve enabled McCain to charge more for their products by reducing price elasticity significantly. We’re able to have conversations with marketing teams about consistency over time and how that drives awareness and recognition. Now we can back that up with some really solid evidence on why it pays off at the bottom line, which makes the adam&eveDDB proposition even more compelling."

IPA Effectiveness Award Winners 2024 In Full

Special Prizes

Grand Prix:

McCain by adam&eveDDB: When the chips are down, margins matter. How a focus on longterm emotional brand building reduced price elasticity and increased profits for McCain

Effectiveness Company of the Year:

adam&eveDDB

Global Effectiveness Network of the Year:

TBWA\Worldwide

The Broadbent Prize for Best Dedication to Effectiveness:

Cadbury

Best B2B:

Procell, Duracell by VML: Beware of your Battery charger

Best Demonstration of Purpose (Not-For-Profit):

KhairKhwah, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (UK Government) by M&C Saatchi UK: How a 'well-wisher' transformed family planning in Pakistan

Best Small Budget:

Laithwaites, Direct Wines Limited by adam&eveDDB and Medialab Group: How we stopped at nothing to deliver a great payback for Laithwaites

The President’s Prize for Next Generation Brand Building:

Guinness, Diageo by AMV BBDO: Effectiveness in black and white: How Guinness supercharged growth in GB and Ireland

The Channon Prize for Best New Learning:

McCain by adam&eveDDB: When the chips are down, margins matter. How a focus on longterm emotional brand building reduced price elasticity and increased profits for McCain

Gold Awards

Regional Market:

Guinness, Diageo by AMV BBDO: Effectiveness in black and white: How Guinness supercharged growth in GB and Ireland

Single Market:

Laithwaites, Direct Wines Limited by adam&eveDDB and Medialab Group: How we stopped at nothing to deliver a great payback for Laithwaites

McCain by adam&eveDDB, When the chips are down, margins matter. How a focus on longterm emotional brand-building reduced price elasticity and increased profits for McCain

Specsavers by MG OMD and Specsavers Creative: I Don't Go Yorkshire Tea, Bettys and Taylors of Harrogate by Lucky Generals and Goodstuff Communications: Long-term brand building done proper

Silver Awards

Not-for-profit Market: o Government Communication Service, UK Government by MG OMD: A new world standard in government media evaluation

KhairKhwah, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (UK Government) by M&C Saatchi UK: How a 'well-wisher' transformed family planning in Pakistan

Single Market:

Cadbury, Mondelēz by VCCP: Stop weeping on the sofa, start gifting with a poster: How

Cadbury won Christmas Concierge Car Wash by AFFINITY: How handcrafted text messages turned a business around

McDonald’s by Leo Burnett UK and OMD Group: McDonald's After Covid: Breaking Rules

And Stealing Hearts Procell, Duracell by VML: Beware of your Battery charger

Tesco Mobile by BBH and EssenceMediacom: Supermarket Mobile: How Tesco Mobile grew to a billion pound business by being helpful in a category that wasn’t

Bronze Awards

Global Market:

H&M by Digitas and H&M: The Search for Growth: How H&M transformed their business by going digital native

Regional Market:

Parodontax, Haleon by Grey London: Solving a long-term health problem by getting better at the short term

Not-for-profit:

Boundless, CSMA by Anything is Possible: Time for Fun - How boundless imagination = transformative creativity

Single Market:

ANZ New Zealand by TBWA\NZ: ANZ Bank: From dreaming big to knowing HOW       

BBC by Havas Media UK: How a next-level paid media strategy helped rebuild love & relevance for the BBC

David Lloyd Clubs by The Kite Factory and TBWA\MCR: David Lloyd Clubs: A tale of taking the high road - premiumisation in the midst of a category price war

HSBC UK by VML: The value of a point of view

LNER by MG OMD and M&C Saatchi: Progress after the pandemic

Müller by VCCP: Out with the new, in with the old: how Müller turned the corner    

Nurofen, Reckitt by McCann London: "It's all in your head": How Nurofen tackled a hidden health crisis to regain category leadership

Permian Strategic Partnership by Edelman: Vaccines for Anti-Vax Land

TEMPTATIONS™, Mars Inc. by adam&eveDDB: How the TEMPTATIONS™ brand resisted the seven deadly sins of product launches

The National Lottery by adam&eveDDB and iProspect: How The National Lottery used advertising to create its own luck, contributing an extra £689 million to Good Causes

Three UK, CK Hutchison Holdings by Wonderhood Studios and Zenith UK: Helping Peter

Pan come of age: Three and the effectiveness of grown-up marketing Vanguard, Vanguard Asset Management Limited by the7stars, AML Group, Analytic Partners and The Nursery: ‘Value to Investors’: how Vanguard’s brand advertising has helped transform the way Britain invests

Xero by december19 and House 337: Xero - How a healthy brand created a healthy business