As part of McCain’s cross-agency team I helped develop a 360 campaign with Earned at its core tapping into the current masculinity crisis in teenage boys.
Our brief included a really powerful insight that while dads often pride themselves on being the playful one when their boys are very small, something seems to happen from age 7-11 that weakens that connection. It means a majority of teenage boys don’t reach out to their dad when something’s up - which is at the root of a lot of the problems around toxic masculinity portrayed in the Netflix series Adolescence.
McCain’s brand platform is all about understanding and supporting the complexities of modern family life and our brief was to find ways to encourage playful banter between dads and their lads during the shared dinnertime moment. All the teams working on it landed on the idea of celebrating the lost art of The Dad Joke.
In partnership with the masculinity charity Beyond Equality, we released an investigation into the role of humour in maintaining the relationship between fathers and sons.
Dad Joke Stand Up
To launch, we created the Dads and Lads comedy club. One 1st July, comedian and father of two Josh Widdicombe will headline a stand-up show performing a set of dad jokes to an audience exclusively made up of dads and lads.
Josh Widdicombe did a round of media interviews talking about how humour has helped strengthen his bond with his young children.
This was a full 360 campaign featuring a TVC from Adam & Eve showing moments of shared silliness between fathers and sons with creator collaborations and short-form social films inspired by the everyday moments of humour that shape father son relationships. We also partnered with Rankin to capture a series of images capturing intimate moments of shared joy between dads and their lads - including Joe Marler and his son. These images were used for the OOH campaign that carried amplified earned interest.
