We launched a product so simple, and yet so perfectly designed to meet a real consumer need, that people thought it was be too good to be true. At the heart of the story are the clear actionable insights, and therefore the specific corresponding roles for paid, owned and earned media channels, that allowed us to solve this paradox.

Paid for media drove awareness and appetite appeal so successfully that we smashed our awareness target (reaching 56% prompted awareness in just 6 weeks) and delivered an impressive RROI of £1.25. Paid media drove 19% of all Jackets sales, four times the average contribution of media expected.

We converted as many people as possible to first purchase using all the owned channels in our arsenal, knowing that the product delivered on the oven baked taste that made jacket potato lovers change their negative preconceptions.

We harnessed the power of advocacy to full effect earning ourselves celebrity endorsement, editorial coverage in national press and television, and boosting the reach of all the positive sentiment on Facebook with tactical paid-for support.

None of this would have been possible without the collaboration of all agencies and the McCain marketing team which allowed us to deliver true integration across all communications channels.

McCain’s launch of frozen oven baked jacket potatoes changed the way the UK cooked jacket potatoes, forever. We successfully established a new mass market product category, which after 12 months had 15.6% penetration. And perhaps most importantly for McCain, we grew the frozen potato category with 26.8% of first Jackets purchasers being completely new to the category. This was both critical to McCain, to deliver true NPD that didn’t cannibalise their existing portfolio, but also to the retailers, meaning that this product launch cemented and enhanced McCain’s distribution channels.