McCain Foods needed to find a way to cut through the social noise on National French Fry Day while emphasizing its focus on togetherness — as the company provides the food and fries that let people connect over a meal. With the desire to develop a thumb-stopping social campaign, McCain Foods engaged us to show up on National French Fry Day in an unexpected way.
Fries wouldn’t be able to bring communities together without the people behind them: the line chefs, fry cooks, front of house, owners/operators and many others. These people deserve the recognition for National French Fry Day. And by making them our focus, we added an element of humanity to social feeds in what is otherwise is a very potato-y post day.
We knew partnering with a prominent influencer from the industry would give us more traction while making the recognition feel more authentic and impactful.
After engaging celebrity chef Beau MacMillan (42K followers), he recommended chef Dom and his crew from The Peanut Gallery as the recipients of this recognition. Their effect on the community around them made them the perfect candidates for the first-ever Service Superstar award and The World’s Crispiest Bouquet.
We quickly found a food stylist who could bring the bouquet to life, so it wasn’t only a cone of fries but a culinary masterpiece — something that would compel people to swipe to see more. Under the guise of being a simple feature on the restaurant, we scoped chef Dom’s place and found a corner to create the bouquet on-site.
A collab reel between McCain Foods and chef Beau teased the event a few days beforehand, and then another collab reel recapped the event on National French Fry Day. Both reels caught the interest of fry lovers from all over, garnering an immense number of views, comments and reshares.
We also created a landing page to celebrate the day. It provided resources (social post templates, badges, etc.) to let others recognize their local Service Superstars, a curated Spotif(r)y playlist to share with friends, fry-inspired menu concepts and, later, a recap video of the event.
This influencer campaign had some staggering results, outperforming any previous reels content for both chef Beau and McCain Foods:
The success of this influencer campaign has created a new brand act for McCain Foods. Beyond National French Fry Day, awarding the Service Superstar and The World’s Crispiest Bouquet is now a way for McCain Foods to recognize folks who make a difference in their communities, influential people in the industry and even its own employees for doing the work that brings people together.
The partnership with chef Beau continues to grow as well, as he’s become a huge advocate of McCain Foods’ mission to create moments of togetherness and recognize those who make it possible. This brand act also provides a quickly executable way to engage other influencers who are relevant and authentic to the foodservice industry.
