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On Strategy Showcase
Müller Rice's award-winning pivot from attempting persuasion to avoiding rejection
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O' Carroll in Chicago. We just got back yesterday from Boston. We had a great sellout crowd at Arnold and brought together some great people, client side people and agency side people to talk about what's so amazing about the Boston market. So we will have that out for you in the next two weeks. Excited to get that out into the world. Our next and last stop in the 2526 live tour is in San Francisco. We will have more details about that in about a week. So if you're in that market, look forward to some more information. And tickets will go on sale as usual on our website. So let's talk about today's episode. This is an award winning paper out of London. It is Muller Rice and if you don't know what Mueller rice is or what rice pudding is, it probably requires a little bit of an explanation. Here it is, in essence, rice grains that are in a sweet, creamy sauce. It's a cold dessert. Now, they started distributing this at Trader Joe's here in the US And I'm not sure that it's something that people in the US know much about. I'm not sure many people in the UK do, but it's a small category. But Muller Rice is a player in that space and was trying to increase the appeal of this product amongst younger men. And so what this is a great example of is not. What's the best way to say it? Not ignoring the obvious and not pushing aside the obvious. What's happening here in this case, and what made it an award winner was the fact that even though the agency had run the traps and gone through the typical sort of FMCG process of developing a strategy for this product, they hit a dead end. They couldn't find something that they confidently felt would help the brand break through and increase sales. But there was this other idea, a rather simple idea that sort of nagged in the back of their heads throughout. Now, because strategists want to appear to be the smartest person in the room, the tendency would be to lean away from that and look for something else that might appear to be a little more original, a little bit more intellectual, a little bit smarter, but kudos to these guys that they didn't do that. They leaned into it and they helped the organization understand the opportunity that lay in this simple idea. So I'm excited to introduce you to. Max Keen is Chief Strategy Officer at VCCP in London and Matthew Hayes is Planning Director at vccp. Now, this agency, vccp, is behind The Meerkatz work, which is very famous in the uk, as well as the Cadbury's work that even here in the us. I know a lot of us see that work and are pretty jealous of it. Brilliant stuff, particularly in the last number of years. So this is the shop behind that work. So this is Muller Rice and the Declan Rice campaign. Enjoy.
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B
Yeah. Rice, rice baby. Rice, rice baby is everywhere right now. It doesn't show any sign of stopping dopping.
- [03:22]
C
Rice, rice baby.
- [03:24]
A
Oh.
- [03:30]
C
Rice, rice baby. A Ross. A Ross baby. Correct.
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A
Rice, rice baby.
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C
You're doing it right?
- [03:39]
B
No, I'm not.
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C
You're a fan, mate.
- [03:45]
B
Oh, yeah. I love these.
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A
So Matt, tell us what, for those who don't know, tell us what Mueller Rice is and whom it competes against.
- [04:01]
B
Yeah, so I'll probably start with what, what Muller is a. To begin with. So Mueller are a big German dairy brand. So since around, I think the late 80s had been in the UK, they sell a big portfolio of different dairy products. You've got yogurts, desserts, butter, milk, ingredients. Pretty much anything dairy based they sell in the. Sell in the uk. They're probably most well known for something called Muller Corner, which is sort of a split pot treaty yogurt. It's not dissimilar to what Chobani do over in the States, if I remember.
- [04:28]
A
Ambrosia Rice, was that back in the day, one of those similar kind of products?
- [04:33]
B
Exactly. I think there's sort of two main competitors at the time, Ambrosia and then there's a slightly more luxury brand called Rachel's in the UK that was also selling rice pudding at the time. So you can imagine not a massive kind of battlefield initially. But I mean, that was some of the interest of this brief as well. Because I mean, as a planner, you take this and it's so preloaded with just sort of heavy sense of, I guess inertia with a lot of audiences. It's so linked back to that, that sense of a much older, older period.
- [04:59]
A
And so who, who would typically be eating this product or buying this product? Is it, is it, is it sort of apparent for their own consumption? Older audience or younger or how would you describe it?
- [05:09]
B
A much older audience. So I'd say largely the category was being kept alive by a much older audience that might remember them back from kind of school days, maybe remembered their grandparents making for them from. From a bygone era. So it was really lacking a role, I'd say, in, in today's, today's market, particularly with a younger consumer we'll come on to this in, in more detail, but I think even when you started to speak to people around rice pudding, they don't really know what it is or when they would use it or what its role really is. So it wasn't really something a lot of people even encountered. So it sat in the fridge in the supermarket, but not a lot of people really know when to buy it, what to use it for, what it even is.
- [05:48]
A
I actually ate one yesterday. Just recently they started carrying it in Trader Joe's, which is a big. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they carry it now and it's pretty damn good, man. My. My wife got into it first and she started to put it in the refrigerator. And then yesterday, knowing that we were doing this call, I. I gotta try one of these. I don't think I've had one for probably 30 years. That was a problem.
- [06:11]
C
Yeah, it's a problem because you have it, it's really good. But when you think about, you think, oh, it's got that layer of skin and your nan used to serve it to you. So it's all.
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A
And it's. And it's rice pudding. Come on. I don't know. You know, there's this phenomenal bit of.
- [06:23]
B
Data literally that speaks to that, that once people have tried it, they consistently buy it and become really loyal to the brand. But getting over that first hurdle was so huge. A, because of what it looks like, but B, because people just don't really know what it is.
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C
Actually previously there was. What was the mascot called? Matt Miller Rice had a mascot campaign.
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B
Was it Funky Bear or Tasty Bee?
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C
Tasty Bee the Bear and slightly retro would be a polite way to describe it. But yeah, Toby came in and issued a sort of transformation brief around how are we going to bring this product back to the sort of fore of culture in the UK and give it the jolt that it needs? And yeah, he really was transformed. He was integral in terms of buying much bigger, bolder thinking for the brand.
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A
And so they. Were you working on the messaging prior to that and what was it? Was it very sort of playful? Was it product specific or how would you describe the tone of the work and the message of the work prior to.
- [07:27]
B
I'll probably take this one, Max, but I think the interesting bit of where it was, it was very functional before, so obviously a massive departure from kind of where we were with the work that we're talking about today. But it was very much about being a hunger filler. So not a dissimilar sort of space to likes of Snickers. It was all about solving a hunger pang. And that mascot that Max mentioned, Tasty B, I think it was around six or seven years previous, they'd created our campaign where Tasty B solved a hunger moment in an office. And they've been rerunning that same execution for a number of years, not updating the messaging. So I think similar to the product, it had almost sort of fallen foul, a little bit of not keeping up with the times. So that kind of exacerbated this issue. Had we had a product that felt slightly outmoded and then the ads hadn't sort of moved with the times as well because we were rerunning those old spots.
- [08:15]
A
So the client comes in, they've got this guy who has this sort of ambition, new ambition for the brand. What's the ask that he brings to the table with his team?
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B
So rice was an interesting one because I think in many ways it was quite a low priority brief. So the brand was in massive decline and it was five years of year on year decline.
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A
What does a low priority brief mean?
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B
I think as in it was a bit of a roll of the dice with rice pudding. So it wasn't a big volume driver. Value sales were right down. It was a smaller part of the portfolio.
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A
But we thought you could experiment with it. Is that what it means? Yeah. So they were willing to experiment.
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B
Exactly that. I think it was a bit of a roll of a dice in the sense that what can we do with this brand? How can we make it worthwhile in the portfolio? I think there was. There was essences of, you know, distribution was under threat. The whole category felt like it become quite outmoded. Like I said, it was being bought by a much older audience. This was a chance of taking this brand and actually saying, what could we do with this to try and recruit a new audience and try and move the category forward. I think one particular thing that was quite interesting, and this was at the heart of the brief, was young men. So young men are quite a difficult audience for Miller to win. Predominantly yogurts and desserts attracts more of a sort of female audience in the uk and young men were somewhere. We're really under indexed. Rice pudding being the sort of stodgy pudding, but it is. It felt like a kind of more natural battleground for us to start to go into. So the initial kind of thinking around the brief, and I think as Max mentioned around Tony, one of the great things about him was we were really involved right at the kind of Marketing strategy, level of the process as well. So we kind of got brought in. What can we do with this brand? Where can we take it? So it was, you know, that intention to recruit a new younger audience was at the heart of it. Where we took it was obviously quite different from that kind of initial brief, but that was kind of the big challenge that we tried to take on with it.
- [10:07]
A
And was it about, Was there an 800 pound gorilla in that small category that you felt you were competing against or was the goal to grow the category? In other words, were you a leader or were you a number two and number three or beyond?
- [10:21]
B
We were in the rice pudding category, which is very, very, very small. And it was a sense that this, this brand was going to deliver for us in the portfolio. We needed to push out of just that rice pudding category and grow it.
- [10:34]
C
I think it's almost ludicrous to call it a category.
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B
Yeah.
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C
If you will.
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A
Right.
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C
I think that kind of created the.
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A
It's a dessert in a figurative way.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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C
So in the dessert category, it's tiny. Tiny, tiny. But yes, in the rice pudding category, it's a giant.
- [10:51]
A
And was this reflected in distribution or did it have national, strong distribution?
- [10:56]
B
It was dwindling quite a lot.
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C
Yeah.
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B
On the way down.
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C
But it is a nationally sort of distributed product.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Okay, so you get the briefing. What is it that you do as your initial strategic approach? Because there's a very cool, important indictment of planning here.
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C
Matt, you talk about this. I just think it's worth saying Muller is a super, super professional FMCG organization that operates across a number of different global markets. And there are brand fundamentals and real rigor across every single one of its brands. So I think that is the mantra that runs through the entire organization, its discipline and approach to marketing. And I think that probably was our initial sort of instinct as to, okay, fine. How are we going to play with the emotional laddering of this product and find some distinct space? But it was, Matt, really, that sort of tore that up.
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A
Okay, interesting. Tell us about that, Matt.
- [11:54]
B
Yes. I mean, having worked on a number of Miller projects and successfully as well, following that sort of format, there's nothing wrong fundamentally with that sort of FNCG approach. I think we started earnestly in the same sort of place, like any good planner would. Right. You try and understand the problem. Why is rice pudding seen as, you know, such a, such an old thing by these younger audiences? What kind of motivation could we solve? Is there a big insight we can sort of uncover? We had a Couple of initial thoughts even actually which we ran by people in one of our kind of first focus groups to kind of see actually how could we win this audience over. So initially we thought is there a way of trying to tap into something that's slightly more culturally relevant? So we looked at obviously being that filling snack is quite high protein, quite high carb, maybe it could play a role maybe in a gym environment as a recovery snack of fuel. We looked at things like actually, could you reframe the nostalgia of it actually, is it suddenly a comfort food? We saw off the back of Lockdown in particular, quite a few brands did quite well in that sort of space. But it didn't take long, I guess in the focus group to realize that was going to be a bit of a dead end of a strategy. And it's funny we were talking about this the other week with one of our research partners. But there's always a moment, I think in a strategic story. It's often in a coral group when someone will say something that crystallizes the problem. So well, the only way that a consumer could. And this was that moment. And the big unlocker in our kind of story was sat on the focus screen, people trying will of rice soaping up the product. There was a guy who must have been about 21 years old that put absolute horror on his face as this product as you were sort of spooning around the rice pudding and he turns and goes, mate, what the fuck? It looks like bone marrow. And that was actually a really. I would credit that to be the unlocker in the process because I made us realize two really important things and I think this was really important when we started to talk to the client about the actual problem as well. First and foremost, our audience had a challenge with the product. They saw it as a beige uninteresting thing. That was going to be a really difficult piece to kind of persuade them to try. But then to Max's point, I think the second bit was actually the playbook we were following or that kind of approach to FMCG marketing was also the problem at that point as well. Trying to climb that, that sort of ladder that we all do, particularly in that category of finding the product truth. How can we link it to an emotional benefit and get to some sense of higher order role in people's lives? That was the issue because we were trying to persuade our way into an audience that just weren't going to notice or pay any attention to it in the first place. We didn't have huge budgets and trying to go down that route, I think ultimately was going to be an uphill battle. So we sort of reframed the task. At that point. It wasn't about persuading this audience to eat Miller rice and how good it is. It was trying to avoid rejection and actually win attention with them. And that was tough because I think as a planner it's quite an existential sort of dilemma because our instincts as planners are all about trying to make sense of a problem. I mean, like the thing that is romanticized about our industry is often those big leaps that we make, the big insights that we have that kind of get us to these really amazing solutions. And we do that by making sense of data, the world problems. But in this case, you sort of had to ask ourselves the question. I can sort of remember back to thinking and rubbing my head trying to figure this one out. But I mean, how much emotional can you really do with a rice pudding? You know, I don't know about you folks, but I've never had a life altering epiphany from a dairy product.
- [15:24]
A
So was it the fact that you came to a point where you were frustrated or became aware of the fact that, that the product or the brand or advertising couldn't solve this problem? Is that what you're saying, in essence that the brand itself couldn't solve the problem through more typical FMCG style advertising?
- [15:48]
C
That's. Oh, sorry, sorry. Go on, go, go, go.
- [15:50]
B
Yeah, I think that's it in essence. I mean, how are you going to even get these people to pay attention to what you're trying to say? And if you were to approach that from the traditional way of thinking, which is usually the persuasion in advertising, that wasn't going to work. I think we could see a way that advertising would work to win their attention, to get them to think about rice pudding and potentially try it off the back of that. So it was a real kind of shift in that approach. I think a lot of it came from as well that more we talked to these people, more we looked at the sort of things that were getting their attention. They were the complete opposite of being smart. Strategic persuasion, the likes of kind of TikTok and things like that. But that kind of level of brain rot and oddity, that was something that was really cutting through with people. And that felt like such a departure from the way that we'd previously used media, the way we previously tried to put messaging forwards around our products. So it felt like it's something we could just really embrace the body language of that audience. To talk about something that previously they might have seen as mundane in a way that was actually going to cut through and get their attention.
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A
What would you add to that? Max?
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C
I said an existential question about planning, right? But if you're asking yourself what's the emotional benefit of rice pudding, maybe you're asking yourself the wrong question was kind of where we got to.
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B
Right.
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C
It's a bit of a daft product and actually trying to get to something really deep and meaningful is probably the wrong sort of strategic pursuit to engage with.
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A
So what's interesting about this, when I read the awards paper that you guys wrote and you literally say, and I quote, that there was a point where you began to question everything you thought you knew about strategy, what was the meaning behind that? Matt?
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B
It's a very good question. I think throughout the process, we almost found ourselves subverting the usual planning laws and got success from that. And that was kind of when we started to question everything we knew. Because I think as a planner, to my previous point, you're largely trained in trying to find sense in things. We were trying to do almost the complete opposite of that because we knew that nonsense was the thing that was actually going to cut through and grab attention. So in a usual process, you might start by thinking about the product and what the messaging might be, how we might persuade people. Instead, we started from a point of how do we win attention above all else? What is there about rice pudding that we can leverage? Not even rice pudding, the whole world of rice and our audience that we can leverage to get people to care about this thing. Which is a very different way of approaching planning, I think, altogether. And it's something that we talked about a lot in the department at vccp, because I think more and more in this kind of fragmented media landscape we all live in, there's opportunities to think about planning in slightly different ways and think about it as a means to an end to get attention for the thing you're trying to sell. And that means that you approach it in a very, very different way to how we have traditionally. And that's not always the right way to do it. And I don't think for a minute we're standing here and saying that planning shouldn't be big end insightful ideas. But often when you are faced with products like Miller Rice that haven't got a lot going for it, that's going to drive attention. It's a slightly different way of thinking about problems. And that's what was quite a nice unlocker for us in terms of how we think about strategy now, often we ask ourselves the question, how is this going to win attention?
- [19:06]
A
So let's talk about the idea. Because, by the way you tell the story, it feels like you almost got to a point of desperation that then led to inspiration you were working through in qual. Nothing seemed to be taking shape. And then obviously, at some point you pivot to something you've. I don't know if it came up organically or it required a lot of reflection, but tell us the idea you got to, the strategic idea you got to. And then I want to sort of come back to what led to that a little bit more. But let's share with the listeners what the idea is.
- [19:44]
B
Yeah, I think it's important to separate Declan Rice and the strategy at this point as well, because I think often people think we've just gone, Declan Rice, Willow Rice. That's the strategy. I think this kind of strategic insight largely came from two things. So one was that qual group where we realized that people were just fundamentally not interested in the product. The second one, looking at the things they were paying attention to and some of the kind of craziness that was in their timelines, looking at things like brain rotation at some of the weird and wonderful worlds of TikTok. Our thought then was the things that are cutting free are nonsensical. So the strategy was about embracing absurdity to find a way to win our audience's attention. The way we got to Declan Rice was slightly more serendipitous, and that was the bit that I think added that extra fuel to it, certainly kind of creatively as well, gave them a good bit of reference point to go from. But it's the first time ever, actually, I've been so thankful that I'm such a massive football fan because naturally my X speed is quite full of a lot of football chatter. And so Declan.
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A
Declan Rice, is this for the listener, is a soccer player in the uk. Which tier of soccer does he play in?
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B
So Declan Rice plays in the very top tier of soccer in the uk. So he plays for Arsenal. He's also an England national football player.
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A
So that's. Is that Premier League? Is that what that is?
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C
Yeah.
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A
Okay. Okay. So. So he is a professional soccer player. Was he very well known before he collabed with Mueller, or was he on the off?
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B
He was on the other, I think it's fair to say, isn't it, Max? I mean, at the time, he was playing for. For West Ham, who are a slightly smaller club in the Premier League, and he was just really starting to find his feet. They won a big kind of European competition and he was starting to start play for England. So that really started to elevate, I think, his profile that period.
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C
So, like, if you were to use a NFL comparison, maybe he's like sort of. He was at the Chicago Cubs and he's now at the Patriots. I don't know if the Patriots are still the best team.
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A
They're probably, well, you know, the Cubs, basically. That's baseball, so we'll forgive you for that. So he was at the Bears and the Patriots.
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C
That's it. Yeah.
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A
So he was moving. He was continuing to move up well. And now we in Chicago say that the Bears are the pinnacle of brilliance in football. So we'll forgive you. You are in the uk.
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C
I profusely apologize. But, yeah, he's now much. He's sort of like. He's really at the top of his game. England's sort of like real leading figure. Causation, correlation. Can you put that down to motorise? I don't know, Fergus. I wouldn't be so. Campaign has done that.
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A
So we've talked about the strategic idea. Where does the creative idea come from? Do you take that idea of, oh, Declan Rice is a football player, very well known. What if we just. Just partner these guys together? I mean, how does that go? Where do you get to Declan Rice or do you guys get to it? Does the creative get to it?
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B
So it came from planning, but obviously made brilliant by the weird and wonderful minds in the VCCP creative department. So initially we. We linked to Declan Rice because our initial kind of sonic that was in the campaign was a rewrite of Vanilla Ice's Ice, Ice, baby. To the tune of Rice, Rice, baby.
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A
Now, this is from creative or from strategy?
- [23:01]
B
Again, this is from strategy. Yeah.
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A
You guys are making making creative's jobs easy.
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C
Poor George, he's gonna hear this and he's not going to be happy.
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A
We're gonna get to creative in a second.
- [23:14]
B
At the time when Declan was playing particularly well for West Ham, the West Ham fans had started singing a chant to the tune of Rice, Rice, baby in the stands.
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A
And.
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B
And very pure kind of serendipity. We were scrolling through Twitter trying to find any real reference to rice pudding or rice more generally, that was active with this audience. And we sort of stumbled across this whole kind of phenomenon that was happening with fans trying Rice, Rice, baby. And that suddenly felt like a real ticket into the audience's attention as well. We've got something quite Fun here. That's one of our old distinctive brand assets that we can bring back, make it our own, and bring it to life in a much more fun way. Leveraging someone like Declan Rice, that was to have way more kind of cultural cachet than the rice.
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A
So Rice Rice Baby was used by you, by Mueller in the past or not?
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B
It was, yeah. We talked about previously with the. The bear. He would intervene in moments of hunger and you'd hear the song kind of Rice, Rice Baby.
- [24:11]
A
Okay, okay.
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B
It was used in a very earnest way previously, and we've obviously reframed it to be much more kind of tongue in cheek.
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A
So here's the thing for both of you guys. So if I think back on what it might have been like for you guys, I can imagine for me personally, if I had gone into the creative department, or in fact, if I'd gone to my CSO and said, okay, hey, how about Muller Rice and Declan Rice and Ice Ice Baby, that my CSO would say, okay, great, what else you got? Or that my creative director would be like, come on, we're not a retail shop doing. You know. So I've got to imagine that it took time for them to warm up to it. And so, Max, tell us about that story from a CSO point of view. When this came to you, I assume you guys were working together at the time, right?
- [25:09]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:10]
A
So it comes to you and what's your initial reaction?
- [25:14]
C
Well, I. Matt, you can tell me. It's safe. I'm talking bollocks here, but I'm always about, like, planning need to get to weird shit. That is one of the key functions. I think planning doesn't do enough of, like, finding the weird bits and working out how to make it mainstream. So I think we try and do that quite a lot within the department. So Matt always knows that a batshit idea will be well received in sort of, like, bringing it to me, as long as it's got some level of strategic substance to it, which, as Matt's already sort of eloquently did, there is a genuine audience insight that would lead you towards this space. And I think, you know, invariably we just don't bother with, like, planning thought stars anymore because, like, critics don't really want them. And if they end up using it, it's a waste of time. They won't use it anyway. This is an instance where it literally was on the brief as a planning thought starter. But I think, and Matt, you should talk about this more, but the relationship between planning and creative and Toby and Tall are the clients was incredibly tight. That triumvirate was really, really fluid. And the account person as well, actually. We shouldn't, shouldn't take all the glory away from them. They deserve some credit. But that level of fluidity between them meant that there was much less ego in the way, which could have ended up having that dismissed. But actually, George, the creative director who I referenced earlier, he really latched onto it and really embraced it.
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A
Right, but Max, follow up on that.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
You weren't initially like, eh, this doesn't feel very strategic. It feels very executional.
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C
Yeah. But Matt's sort of strategic leap wasn't let's just do something with Declan Rice. It was, how do we embrace the sort of power of nonsensical stupidity in order to put this brand back into culture? And Declan Rice was a method of doing that. And I think that's why I'm really passionate about this sort of like paper. And the fact that it's won an APG Grand Prix is slightly ridiculous on the surface of it.
- [27:15]
B
Right.
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C
Because it's Muller Rice meets Declan Rice. But it makes a serious point that there is serious and substantive strategic thinking here, but it lands in a stupid place and that's okay. And we should probably, probably be more positive and encouraging of actually landing somewhere that seemingly feels a bit daft and a bit weird is a good thing to do. Because if we're seeking to create attention and there's strategic rigor that gets you there and tells you why it's the potent thing to do, that's something we could probably all do with celebrating a bit more.
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A
Yeah, very interesting. So, Matt, when I mentioned earlier that I read the paper, how would you describe what the message is that you wanted to express in that paper as it relates to the way we approach planning?
- [28:01]
B
I feel quite passionately about this and I'm glad that you pulled out the way the paper was written because I think even looking at every awards paper you ever read, I think it kind of feeds this image that planning has. I lose count the amount of times I've heard a planner introduced to the room as the smartest person in the room or the brains of the operation, which obviously is really flattering and we all kind of love, but it's also not true. And I think it actually undervalues the role that planning plays quite often in the process. So we talk about ourselves as the voice of the consumer and having that real sense of empathy. It's not always about having the really smart intellectual leap on some of the problems Sometimes you can get something that is unashamedly populist, even if it's a bit daft and a bit dumb. That is the most impactful role you can play as a planner in the room. And I actually think, and I talked about this a little bit in the paper, but I actually think this isn't just coming up with a daft approach. Obviously on paper, as Max said, it could look as simplistic as Miller Rice and Declan Rice, but I think what this actually is is some of planning's most important skills, which is having taste, having nerve, knowing when the timing's right, and having that kind of cultural intuition that even when something feels a bit daft, that could be your ticket into your audience's attention and be a really, really impactful way of thinking about planning. I don't think those planning skills get given enough kind of respect or enough kind of airtime, because often we will talk about the interesting bit, which is that big, big insight that people come up with, oh, I wish I'd thought of that. But sometimes the work isn't necessarily the work that you wish that you'd done yourself. That is the most impactful. And I think this might be an example of that, where it is so unashamedly populist, it's not going to trouble any kind of can juries. But that's also the magic of it, because this is the bit of work that every one of my friends that doesn't work in advertising remembers and knows because it is silly and it's got that kind of fun at the heart of. So I guess my message for planners and kind of how I tried to write this paper, and I'm so glad that it did so well at the apg, was that too often I think we're performing cleverness as planners. We feel like we need to be the smartest person in the room to say that kind of clever analysis of what we see. But actually, some of the best thing you can do is put yourself out there with the silly solution, say the thing that everyone's thinking but it's too scared to say. That's often the most impactful thing we can do as planners. And I hope people feel slightly more liberated to be the dumbest person in the room as much as they are the smartest one.
- [30:25]
A
But I think it sort of undersells the paper. Sort of undersells the fact that this is a good strategy. Yeah, this wasn't something that was. You guys use the word absurd in the paper. It's not that absurd, really. It's unexpected, but it's not that much different than Nike sponsoring a football player or a basketball player. It's sort of like that. It's a version of that. It's a collaboration. It's a sponsorship partnership that's brought to a commercial channel.
- [30:59]
C
Well, yes, but it's actually an inversion of that in a lot of respects. Right. So because we've talked about this before, Matt and I, some. Some sports brand partnering with Stephen Curry. Is that. Is that. Is that a basketball player?
- [31:14]
A
Steph Curry.
- [31:15]
C
Right. Or partnering with a football player. We're not. We're not trying to borrow the equity or the attributes that those athletes imply in the way that Nivea might or Gillette might say, you know, hey, you can implicitly look like this guy because he shades with this blade, and you can buy this blade from us. Actually, the reason why we've partnered with Declan Rice is for an absurd reason. So I think it kind of an inversion of that play, which is why I think it's all the more interesting.
- [31:44]
A
So let's go back to when you guys initially have a conversation with George.
- [31:48]
B
Yeah.
- [31:48]
A
Because I'm like. I really am. I think it's. As a planner, because of all the reasons you talked about Matt. There's a burden, a level of burden on our shoulders to at least appear to be the fucking smartest guy in the room or to at least feel like you're bringing something. Right, right. That requires a little reflection. Right. You go to George. How do you present this to George? And what's George's initial reaction? Because as I mentioned earlier, I would be worried that George will be like, I don't want to do that kind of work. We're going to come up with something else. What was the reality of it?
- [32:27]
B
I'll be honest. Briefing the craters was the bit I was absolutely terrified about. There's a line in the paper that says, you know, the ego hit that you have, saying this is what planning has spent weeks cooking up, is mother ice time. Secular. Rice wants to go to the creative director with, I think, as Max said previously, I mean, real credit to George on this brief. And I think in general, we have quite an unpretentious creative department at vccp, which is really great, particularly in the Muller turnaround story. It was a very tight team, and I think we were all in the trenches together with a lot of those problems and really trying to bring those. The sort of brand back to its kind of former glory. I think the key bit with George was pulling apart the Declan Rice for starter to what the overall strategy was. So at no point was this George Ryerson ads Declan Rice Times Miller Rice. I think that would have been totally fair enough if a creative turn around and said, this is not what I want to do. What it was was telling them about how do we win attention by using absurdity to sell rice pudding. Could we use someone like Declan Rice, for example, or something totally bonkers? What's great about George is he has a very weird and wonderful brain. He's done lots of kind of work in this sort of space. So some work that Max worked on as well with Tango in the uk, which are really kind of. Oh, yeah, wow, good absurd advertising. So this was right up his street. And I think it gave him an opportunity to do something that kind of let the. Let the shackles off a little bit, which obviously is not the case a lot of the times when you have an FMCG brand. So I think a lot of the chat we had and a lot of the thoughts started, we had were in and around that world with slightly odd, weird advertising. And I think rather than sort of waving rules at him and telling him he had to use Declan Rice, it was more giving him what was quite silly, but quite a focus brief that he had to kind of go after. I think he really thrived in that for a couple of reasons. One being George is an absolute massive football fan. So there was an appealing, appealing kind of carrot there. But I think just the chance to do something wildly different in this category was. Was a really interesting creative challenge as well.
- [34:33]
A
When you said they come back to you with a bunch of Declan Rice ideas, or did they come back to you with like 10 ideas that included a Declan Rice way at it?
- [34:43]
B
We had a mixture of stuff in the bag. Some of it lent slightly more into, I guess, a slightly more functional world of where we were before. So there was a few rounds and a few iterations where we had to keep pulling back and saying, actually, no, we've got. We've got too much message in here. How can we just keep it purely focused on getting people to think about rice pudding and the oddness of Declan Riceman? That idea was favored because it made it a lot easier to actually pull away from any sense of kind of functional messaging about the brand.
- [35:11]
A
Let's talk about how this campaign rolled out creatively, talk about some of the creative executions, and then we'll drop them in for the listeners and we'll drop it in for people watching on YouTube.
- [35:21]
B
Great. So I think the first iteration of this Campaign was very outdoor based, so went big bold, was quite simple out of home. And that really aimed to capture attention and land the observer to the idea. So we saw Declan Rice front and center with rice Rice baby. Declan Rice times mother rice. It was largely Declan dancing around with a pot of pudding. So again, really pushing against that sense of high concept.
- [35:44]
C
Of course, yeah, real high concept stuff, man.
- [35:48]
B
And fishing against that sense of using a sports partnership. Seriously, you know, we didn't have any performance chat. There was no, you know, Declan showing his skills. He was literally dancing around with pot of pudding, which A, brought out his personality brilliantly, but B, sort of really landed the silliness of the idea.
- [36:04]
C
And Matt, I don't want to cut across you, but you're too humble. I think it's worth saying planning did continue having a hand in that because I think there's a sort of like, there is an inherent sort of desire once you get close to execution to, oh, we should probably get a functional product point in here, or we're dealing with a super sort of high profile sports select. We should probably make sure he does something that feels like congruent with that. And I think Matt's sort of working with George was guarding against any of that happening. So you maintain the integrity of the nonsense strategy. So whilst we laugh at the fact that it's high concept, it's intentional in terms of he's dancing around slightly daft with this pudding because that's the sort of purity of the strategy brought into execution.
- [36:43]
A
And then what about the films?
- [36:45]
B
Yeah, so the first film called Rice Fever was our first bitcoin AV that we did off the. The back of the campaign and actually went out during or in the lead up to the World Cup. So a lot of that was trying to hijack the noise, I suppose, around. Around that period. But again, do it in no way at all that references football or the. The occasion that was happening. So how do we take the World cup and Declan. Declan's equity during the World cup and use that to talk about just rice pudding and how great rice pudding is? So in that ad, you see a slightly ridiculous sense of rice fever sweeping the nation all to our rice rice baby sonic. And it gets crazier and crazier throughout. We see a woman learning how to say rice, rice baby in Spanish. We see people doing a TikTok dance to rice, rice baby. And my favorite bit in that whole campaign is Declan's actual chauffeur getting a hacked in rice rice baby haircut at the back of his Back of his head. And at the end of the film, you have this lovely moment where the chauffeur turns round and Declan says, oh, you know, Rice, Rice baby. Is that for me, actually? Oh, yeah. No, I love these rice puddings. They're great. So even he's in on the joke that actually rice pudding is. Is the thing that we're talking about and celebrating.
- [37:56]
A
Great. So here's this. Here's the spot. What was. What did you name it again? What was the name you gave it?
- [38:00]
B
Rice Fever.
- [38:01]
A
Rice Fever. Okay.
- [38:07]
B
Yeah. Bryce. Rice Baby. Rice, Rice Baby is everywhere right now. It doesn't change already. Stopping. Stopping. Rice, Rice baby.
- [38:17]
A
Oh.
- [38:23]
C
Rice, Rice baby. Ross baby.
- [38:28]
B
Correct.
- [38:29]
A
Rice, Rice baby.
- [38:31]
C
You're doing it wrong.
- [38:32]
B
No, I'm not.
- [38:35]
C
You're fine, mate. Oh, yeah.
- [38:38]
A
I love these. So let's talk about impact. Obviously, you mentioned earlier you got an APG Grand Prix award, which is amazing. Congratulations on that. Tell us about anything you can share about either the brand or the business impacts going forward. And particularly with the focus on that younger male audience that you were going after.
- [39:07]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important to cover this off. This was work not only was massively popular, but really worked for the business as well. So as we were saying at the start of this process, rice had been declined for five years, dropped sort of 10 percentage points in penetration. It went from being, I guess, on the brink of being delisted really, in a lot of supermarkets, to 8 and a half million in incremental revenue off the back of the campaign. Penetration grew by 7%. So it was completely recovered, the damage of the previous five years and it went into double digit growth after being a double digit decline for over five years. So the overall kind of financial side of this was. Was huge. The thing that I'm probably most proud of, though, is the cultural impact that it had off the back of that. I know I mentioned anecdotally when I tell normal people what I do for a living and they say, well, what campaigns have you worked on? This is one they're all seeing. They'll remember and they'll know and they think it's brilliant. It's the one my little brother tells his mates about. I think that sense of kind of populism isn't something we celebrate enough as an industry. Like, we'll talk about the kind of challenging, impactful work that looks great at sort of can and in the creative awards juries, but this is sort of often the sort of stuff that cuts free. And to put that into context, I Mean, some of the crazy bits of cultural impact I think we had, there was an England stream during, during the World cup where David Beckham went to go visit at all of the England players. As he goes up to Declan Rice, he introduces him as Muller Rice to the camera to take. I do this ridiculous. And even David Beckham saying it and referencing it was, was really great. We talked about sort of Declan's trajectory during this period as well. But during this period he transferred from, from West Ham to Arsenal, which was a 100 odd million transfer, big record transfer fee. It was over every single bit of of newspapers in the UK and everyone was referring to him as Miller Rice throughout that period as well. There was loads of memes across X of people using Muller Rice as a way to reference Declan. And even to this day there's a lot of kind of banter that you'll see between football fans where he gets referred to as Muller.
- [41:11]
A
So does it continue today, this campaign? Is the partnership still in place, still going?
- [41:16]
B
Partnership's still going and I'd say it's probably one of the most famous Mueller campaigns for that reason as well, which has been really great. I think the cultural impact has continued as well. So a couple of weeks ago, Arsenal got quite a big, big win in the Premier League and at the end of the game they played Vanilla Ice and you got the whole ground singing, rice, rice, baby. You know, 80,000 people. Which, again, the impact of a pudding that no one cared about a couple of years ago.
- [41:41]
C
And we let himself into product extensions. So he's just done his own version, his own recipe of Muller Rice, which has been out and we've made and we've sold in different supermarkets. So it's sort of had quite a transformational impact across the board, both culturally, but also in the commercial side.
- [41:59]
A
So, Max, as we wrap up here, what are the lessons you hope other strategists can learn from this as they apply to sort of their next assignment going forward?
- [42:11]
C
I think, I guess there's two things I think in terms of one, it inverts industry snobbery. Right. Matt talked about how often planning is introduced as sort of the smartest person in the room. And I think there's definitely a benefit to that, but I think it can be a comfort blanket and I think as a consequence, it can perpetuate this sense. The strategy needs to be intellectually intimidating and I think if you're not useful, then you're not in service of the work. And I think this is a serious bit of strategy. But it is wrapped up in a humility and slight daftness which was about getting to really good work. And I think the more we can celebrate that, the better. And then the other thing is it's really lovely to work on mega brands and big global brands with huge money, but money isn't the be all and end all. And actually you can get really brilliant, culturally impactful workout on smaller, slightly less cool looking brands which often you end up working on as a junior. Right. Or as someone younger and you end up working on those brands. And that actually can be a really rich playground for young.
- [43:17]
A
Yeah, many times it's better than working on big global internationals. More freedom.
- [43:21]
C
That's it.
- [43:22]
A
It is. Max Keane, chief strategy officer at VCCP in London and Matt Hayes is planning director at vccp. Thank you both. Congratulations on the award. I love the conversation and I think that a lot of people can learn that sometimes great ideas don't necessarily have to be overly complicated. They can happen. And I think that's a great thing for everybody to remember because we put such massive burdens on ourselves so many times and I think that burden can lead us in the wrong strategically. So congratulations. Well done, guys. Thanks for joining us on the show.
- [43:57]
C
Thank you, folks.
- [43:59]
A
And we will see everyone on the next episode.