2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

From 2013-2020, A&W had successfully stolen market share from the category leader, McDonald’s, by differentiating its brand on the basis of its quality ingredients.

In 2020, the next chapter of that story was grass-fed beef. A&W invested in overhauling its beef sourcing so that all our cattle would be raised on natural grasslands, not on factory farms. There was only one issue.
It wasn’t having any impact on sales or market share.

The primary objective of the campaign was not to raise awareness of grass-fed beef, the brand had already done that. Instead, it needed to find a way to translate its existing association with it into market share growth.

The insight was that, contrary to what’s expected of fast-food,
A&W beef is higher quality than what most people have in their own fridge
and what gets sold in supermarkets.

When it looked at the list of places that its beef ranchers supplied to, the list was littered, not with the names of big supermarkets and fast food places,
but high-end butchers and the best restaurants around the country, because
those are the people who use grass-fed beef.

The strategy was to show how the people who know the most about how to make the best burgers in the country refuse to use anything but grass-fed beef.

There were three key elements to the execution.

First, it partnered with top butcher-shops in Vancouver and Toronto that received grass-fed beef from the same ranchers as it did, and labeled its beef as the same beef supplied at A&Ws around the country.

Then, it partnered with well-known chefs from Vancouver and Toronto, and challenged them to create their own version of the Mama Burger using A&W’s grass-fed beef, picked up at one of the butcher shops it had partnered with. It featured
chefs from across the country from Vancouver to Toronto.

Lastly, it filmed spots featuring different chefs about why they chose grass-fed beef for their own restaurants, and featured it on TV, social, and OLV.

As a result, A&W increased market share by 0.4% during the campaign window, roughly equivalent to $368M. A&W maintained the highest ad recall out of any competitive brands during the campaign window, including Tim Hortons and McDonald’s which spend considerably more media than A&W.

Credits

Chief Creative Officer: Aaron Starkman
Chief Strategy Officer: Sean McDonald
Executive Creative Director: Morgan Tierney, Leia Rogers
Creative Director: Bob Simpson, Sheldon Rennie, Sean O'Connor, Hans Thiessen
Art Director: Jamie Gurnell, Charmaine Cheng, Liana Mascagni
Writer: Hannah Prystay, Jon Mandell
Print Producer: April Haffenden, Sarah Lee
Broadcast Producer: Sarah Vingoe
Editor: Matthew Griffiths, Rob Doucet (Cycle Media),
Max Parr, Stephen Shevchuk (Primeworks)
Lead Strategist: Darren Yada
Strategist: Sam Masooleh
Account Services: Sonja Soubolsky, Tianna Fung, Chelsea Stoelting,
Kennedy Crawford, Kaitlyn Brouse
Amplification: Aliz Tennant, Karin Torn
Media Agency: iProspect/Dentsu Aegis Network

Client:
Director, Brand Communications & Digital Marketing: Julia Cutt
VP, Marketing: Tom Newitt