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Success Story

Chicken of the Sea Campaign With Jessica Simpson Becomes One of the Most Talked About Campaigns of 2024

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Industry:

Food and Beverage

Platform:

YouTube

15M

consumers reached

higher lift in consideration recorded for females between 35-44 than other audiences

66%

above benchmarks on video completion rates

30%

above benchmarks on click-through rates

Make every impression matter on YouTube and Connected TV.

It’s been just over 20 years since Jessica Simpson made the iconic mix-up between tuna and chicken during an episode of the reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica with her then-husband Nick Lachey, but Millennials will never forget it. The mix-up came about because she was eating Chicken of the Sea tuna, so in 2024 the iconic brand decided to recreate the mix-up in an ad that would become one of the most talked about campaigns of the year so far. “To announce our newest platform…it seemed perfectly fitting to partner with our friend Jessica Simpson to share how Chicken of the Sea fits into her busy life as a mom, artist and entrepreneur,” said Griffin Raasch, the company’s director of marketing. “Her iconic, ‘Is it chicken or is it fish?’ moment is part of the fabric of pop culture, and we had a lot of fun working with Jessica to give it a new spin in 2024.”

The ad featured Jessica and her daughter Maxwell, and was shot and edited by Reach Agency. Chicken of the Sea worked with its media agency, Ignited, and YouTube partner, Pixability, to put together the plan to use this great, social first creative to launch its new tuna and salmon packets and reach as many consumers in the U.S. as possible.

The Strategy

Make every impression matter on YouTube and Connected TV.

The teams at Chicken of the Sea and Ignited knew that YouTube had been a top driver of results in the past for the brand, and felt YouTube should be central to the campaign. The YouTube plan launched in conjunction with Jessica Simpson posting first on her Instagram (Feed & Stories) to capitalize on the virality of her celebrity. Those same assets launched on YouTube, getting the majority of the budget to reach a more TV like audience since YouTube now has the best reach on CTV, as well as vertical video to mirror TikTok with YouTube Shorts. Ignited partnered with Pixability to put together a campaign to leverage both this unique horizontal and vertical ad creative to target their core audience of active, health-conscious users and incorporate a new target of Millennial pop culture fans aged 25-44 with a focus on fans of Jessica Simpson specifically through a combination of custom behavioral and contextual targeting tactics. On the behavioral side, Pixability used multiple tactics including targeting custom audiences who had searched entertainment topics on Google like Jessica Simpson, Beyonce, Top 100 Music, and Pop Princesses. Contextually, Pixability curated a custom list of top YouTube channels that included top celebrity channels, some of which sourced from a partnership with the popular Famous Birthdays site. Overall the goal was to maximize reach of within their target audience, while keeping frequency to a minimum. As an added benefit of the partnership, Pixability’s team provided video SEO services to help make their video creative more easily discoverable organically for people searching for related terms on Google and YouTube.

The Result

The campaign has been a huge success, which is best highlighted by the outpouring of comments on the videos of people saying that this “has to be used as a Super Bowl ad!” In addition to the buzz around the video creative, the campaign metrics all pointed to tremendous success as shown below:

Reach: The campaign has reached over 15 million consumers in the U.S. so far, keeping the frequency at a low level of 1.84x as hoped, and has driven high engagement with the right audiences.
Brand Lift: Brand Lift studies showed that consumers age 35-44 and specifically females recorded a nearly 2X higher lift in Consideration than other audiences, validating the targeting tactics were driving impact with the right audiences.
Beating benchmarks: Overall the campaign saw video completion rates that were 66% above benchmarks and click-through-rates that were 30% above benchmarks. The top performing targeting tactics included the custom entertainment audiences Pixability created which was the top targeting tactic for both video completion rates 2x higher CTRs. Additionally, Pixability’s custom-curated contextual segment of entertainment channels drove very high completed views and click-throughs.
Vertical Ad Success: All of the vertical videos outperformed the horizontal videos in both completed views and clicks, showing that this new twist on an old story was best told in the short-form vertical ad format. The top-performing ad creative overall was this vertical ad which perfectly captured the interaction between Jessica and her daughter.

consumers reached

higher lift in consideration recorded for females between 35-44 than other audiences

above benchmarks on video completion rates

above benchmarks on click-through rates

“
This campaign has really taken on a life of its own, not only performing well from a media metrics standpoint, but also just generating incredible buzz by igniting the iconic 20-year-old Newlywed’s moment to launch the newest offerings from Chicken of the Sea. We knew that YouTube would be a key component of the success of this launch, reaching consumers beyond the social-sphere, and attribute that to the great teamwork between the team at Chicken of the Sea, our agency partners, and Pixability.
”

Amy DeMallie, Media Director

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