Lessons from Aldi's IPA Gold winning Kevin the Carrot - McCann

As Christmas ad season is in full swing, I speak to the planning and strategy team from McCann Manchester, the agency that created Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot.What we cover in this episode:Why Darren and Jamie bring a life size Kevin’s to meetingsThe benefit of doing strategy as a pairConvincing a sceptical customer to shop at Aldi for ChristmasTaking inspiration from John Lewis the reigning king of ChristmasHow the humble carrot being the big ideaSelling the idea into AldiWhy they didn’t want to recreate a brand new campaign every yearThe challenge to beat Kevin every yearInspiration from light entertainment and why’s its harder than it looksSticking to what works whilst always finding ways to keep it freshHow to balance Christmas, a cost-of-living crisis & ChristmasThe importance of entertainment even in tough timesJamie & Darren rate this years crop of Christmas adsBeating the benchmark Coke Truck IndexHow Kevin successfully leverages the Long and Short of itUsing System1 testing to screen for early stage ideasWhy the simplicity of the System1 metrics are so importantThe case for testing a 4 min long animaticHow media is like renting a stage upon which to put on a showThe astonishing business results delivered by the Kevin campaignProving that being cheaper doesn’t mean you can’t be betterThe power of combining fame and consistencyWear in vs wear out on the System1 Test Your Ad databaseWhy we are over familiar with our own work vs the audienceHow little attention advertising actually getsThe power of jokes you know the punchline toBeing lovably pirates rather than the navyThe powerful purpose being Aldi’s mission to make good food affordable