McVitie’s Autumn Ad Is a Slam Dunk
McVitie's
There's Only One That Brings Us All Together. McVitie's.
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McVitie’s biscuits have been at the heart of British life for almost 200 years. From a morning cuppa with a Rich Tea through to an elevenses Hobnob or teatime Chocolate Digestive, McVitie’s is a snack that’s known and loved across generations. And now, with help from adam&eve/TBWA, the brand is letting us know how proud it is of that.
“There’s only one that brings us all together” is McVitie’s masterbrand campaign for this autumn, building on their successful ad with Trevor McDonald from 2023, “There’s only one”. That work was about reminding people about McVitie’s powerful heritage status as “the original”, and it scored a very strong 4.5-Stars on Test Your Ad, well above the Bakery Products UK average of 3.7-Stars.
But the new ad goes one better, landing a 5.4-Star rating for McVitie’s, putting it in the top 5% of all Bakery Products ads. It is McVitie’s best result for a Masterbrand ad. The Star Rating predicts exceptional potential for long-term share gain and business impact, but the spot also gets an exceptional Spike Rating predicting short-term sales boosts.
What makes this ad such a success? Rather than rely on a particular celebrity or a long story narrative, McVitie’s go all out here to build an emotional platform that illustrates how the brand fits into the everyday lives of its customers. Right from the opening shot, which takes us to a prenatal yoga class where one pregnant woman sympathetically rolls a pack of biscuits to another, we’re in the middle of real, relatable lives. This ad is all about ordinary people finding humour in their shared rituals – like a biscuit breaking mid-dunk – brought to life on screen in a charming and entertaining way.
That means it has plenty of one of the most valuable creative elements we see in advertising – what Orlando Wood calls between-ness, the sense of human connection and togetherness expressed not just in dialogue but in glances, gestures and non-verbal communication. Like saying it with McVitie’s biscuits, for instance. The ad creates emotion via this sense of between-ness, which also brings to life McVitie’s brand promise as a social connector – something that brings people together in small but very meaningful ways.
The excellent Test Your Ad results for this new ad suggest that McVitie’s big autumn campaign will be a huge success. As we head into the colder months consumers will be reminded of the role McVitie’s plays in bringing people together.
