Bono, Conor McGregor, Sally Rooney – there’s nothing like the sight of one Irish person doing well to turn their fellow countrymen into begrudgers. And why should Irish food be any different?

To help promote Lidl's award-winning and 100% Irish beef, we developed a fully integrated campaign with a thoroughly Irish tone of voice that stands miles apart from other supermarket advertising. 

Based on the insight that Lidl’s beef is so good, some “beefgrudgery” is only natural, we took to the streets (all right, aisles!) to find out what the other foods really think of the new Lidl Beef ad.

We’ve all seen international brands in this sector try (and fail) to appeal to Irish audiences.

With “Beefgrudgery”, we wanted to create a campaign with an authentically Irish sense of humour that was sure to resonate with shoppers.  

Collaborating with animation studio Piranha Bar, we created a range of anthropomorphic food characters in a claymation style hailing from different parts of the country, who’ve got a lot to say about all the attention Lidl Beef is getting!

To push Lidl’s Irish credentials even further and ensure our characters’ accents sounded as accurate as possible, we cast voice talent from our respective areas: North-sider Sliced Pan was voiced by popular Dublin comedian Tony Cantwell; Wexford TikTok star Shauna Davitt played Wexford Strawberry; our Cork Cheese was voiced by well-known Cork comedian Norma Sheahan; and lastly Kerry Turnip was played by comedy legend Jon Kenny.

First we released a 15” teaser video to live on social, to build interest in the campaign and lay the groundwork for the 30” TV ad to follow.

Our TV ad ran at peak times on Irish TV such as during the EUROs, and sparked more than its fair share of discussion online. The Kerry Turnip character in particular proved a massive hit!

We followed this up with a further social video featuring Wexford Strawberry and her “crew” that significantly expanded the world we’d created.

Once our food characters were firmly established through TV and social, we could play with their different personalities. And since they had a lot to get off their chests about the new Lidl Beef campaign, we created a phone-in radio show where our characters could voice their frustrations, calling it “The Check-Out Line” (any resemblance to the Irish radio staple “Liveline” being purely coincidental!).

The campaign proved such a success that we were asked to return to the world of “Beefgrudgery”. So for our follow-up TV ad, we revisited two of our best-loved characters while also adding introducing two new faces: Waterford Blaa, voiced by another comedy legend (and Waterford man) Mario Rosenstock; and D4 Avocado (or Avo for short), played by well-known Dublin actor Mark Huberman.

We also created a 15-second social video to accompany the TV ad starring Avo, the intensely hateable superfood from the extremely privileged area of Dublin called D4 (think Chelsea, but with more man buns).