Chips Break a Dad’s Phone Trance in McCain’s New Family Ad

McCain’s “We Are Family” campaign is in its seventh year now, a strong and successful run for any Masterbrand campaign. The secret to its success is its flexibility – the campaign can adapt to whatever kind of family McCain wants to spotlight. And the range of miniature stories you can tell about families around the kitchen table is extremely wide.

The campaign, developed by Adam&Eve/DDB, also works because it has “between-ness” baked in. This quality, identified as a booster for effectiveness by Orlando Wood in his books Lemon and Look Out, is all about the relationship between the people on screen. Dialogue, meaningful glances, body language – it all creates this sense of “between-ness” and human connection. A vignette of a family moment is bound to provide that, and because between-ness draws the attention of the brain’s right hemisphere, it’s an effective builder of positive brand associations.

But in “Father And Son”, the latest UK “We Are Family” ad, which had a successful run last year in various European countries, this between-ness looks to be at risk. A father has cooked McCain oven chips for his son, but Dad is busy and very distracted, taking calls and looking worriedly at his phone. The boy decides to do something about it, catching Dad’s attention by making a game of blowing on his chips. Then Dad takes the cue, and relaxes, having fun by messing about and pretending to be a chip monster. By the time Mum enters, the two are laughing together, the picture of between-ness.

It’s a classic entry in the McCain campaign, with the product firmly the hero but with no pushy commercial messaging to interrupt the elegant and emotional storytelling. There are strong performances from father and son and a gentle melodic soundtrack to heighten the emotional response.

So how does it perform? Very strongly. On the Test Your Ad platform “Father And Son” nets a 4.2-Star Rating, well above the 2.9-Star average in its food category, which shows a strong potential for long-term market share gain (given the right investment). The ad shines even more when it comes to short-term Spike rating, though, with an Exceptional rating well above the modest score the category typically achieves. And Brand Fluency beats the category average too, thanks to a well-placed early packaging shot.

So “Father And Son” manages to do very well both on short- and long-term effectiveness. Its secret is that, even though it’s only 30 seconds long, it manages to squeeze in a real emotional journey, with sadness at the Dad’s distraction and worry turning into happiness when his son brings him out of his phone-based trance. It’s a recognisable, very contemporary scene with a lovely resolution that keeps both Star and Spike Ratings very high for McCain.