McCoy's 'Go Bold' by BMB launched in the United Kingdom in August 2015, repositioning the ridged-crisp brand away from 'Man Crisps' toward authentic
ARCHIVEMcCoy's Go Bold Reframes British Snack Advertising in 2015
McCoy's 'Go Bold' is a 2015 United Kingdom film campaign created by agency BMB for KP Snacks, repositioning the ridged-crisp brand away from its long-running 'Man Crisps' identity toward a broader message of authentic self-expression, using the image of a plumber freely singing along to a pop ballad to signal that real boldness means ignoring social expectation.
The campaign launched on 25 August 2015, according to The Drum, marking a deliberate creative and strategic pivot for a brand that had spent several years defining itself through traditional masculine humour. McCoy's entered this period as the fourth-largest brand in the United Kingdom crisps and snacks category, with retail sales value of £108 million in 2015, as reported by The Drum. That commercial standing gave the brand the weight to attempt a repositioning rather than merely a refresh. The 'Go Bold' campaign arrived alongside the first major identity redesign McCoy's had undertaken in fifteen years, announced in May 2015 according to The Drum, with the full campaign rollout following that summer.
The strategic ambition was explicit. Jeff Swan, Marketing Director at KP Snacks, stated in The Drum on 25 August 2015: 'The real, bold flavours of McCoy's and this new campaign aims to encourage and inspire people to boldly unleash their true self, their Real McCoy.' That framing — boldness as authenticity rather than bravado — defined the campaign's departure from its predecessor positioning. Where 'Man Crisps' had used embarrassment and peer pressure as comedic devices, 'Go Bold' inverted the logic entirely, celebrating the man who refuses to be embarrassed at all. The campaign consists of a single film asset, produced for online distribution across the United Kingdom market. Clapboard Score: 57/100.
ARCHIVEMcCoy's entered the 2015 campaign cycle carrying the legacy of a creative platform that had defined the brand for several years. Publicis had created the long-running 'Man Crisps' campaign in 2012 and 2013, according to LBBOnline, positioning McCoy's as the informal social snack for men navigating laddish situations — most memorably through the 'Jukebox' execution, in which a pub-goer accidentally selects 'Puppy Love' and faces the collective scorn of the room. That campaign used social embarrassment as its engine. BMB's 'Go Bold' replaced that engine entirely, shifting from a man who fears ridicule to a man who is indifferent to it.
The strategic rationale reflected a broader cultural shift in the United Kingdom around representations of masculinity in advertising. By 2015, brands across multiple categories were beginning to interrogate whether traditional masculine stereotypes were limiting their audience rather than defining it. As reported by The Drum, the 'Go Bold' campaign was framed in coverage by Opinion editor John McCarthy as a creative 'u-turn' in McCoy's portrayal of men — a characterisation that acknowledged the deliberate nature of the break from prior work.
Within the United Kingdom crisps and snacks category, McCoy's sat fourth by retail sales value according to The Drum, placing it in direct competition with larger ridged and standard crisp brands. Walkers, owned by PepsiCo, dominated the category as the United Kingdom's leading crisp brand, while brands such as Pringles maintained strong positions through distinctive format and flavour-led marketing. For McCoy's to grow its share in this environment, differentiation through brand personality rather than product specification alone was a credible strategic choice. The outsider and rebel identity embedded in 'Go Bold' offered McCoy's a culturally distinct positioning that neither Walkers nor Pringles was occupying with comparable directness in 2015.
The 'Go Bold' film centres on a single, economical creative idea. A plumber, working alone in a domestic setting, unselfconsciously sings along to Ella Henderson's 2014 ballad 'Ghost' — a song far removed from the rock or sport soundtrack that conventional masculine snack advertising would have deployed. The choice of song is the creative mechanism. It signals vulnerability, emotional openness, and an indifference to performed masculinity, all without exposition or dialogue.
Matt Waller, Executive Creative Director at BMB, described the thinking in LBBOnline, stating: 'Men have been enjoying car-aoke since forever.' That observation grounds the creative in a genuinely observed human behaviour — the private, uninhibited musical performance that most people engage in when they believe no one is watching. By staging it in a professional context, with a tradesman rather than a private individual, the film amplifies the boldness of the act. The plumber is not hidden. He simply does not care.
The film was produced for online distribution in the United Kingdom, a medium that allowed the creative to operate without the compression constraints of broadcast television. The single-asset execution concentrated the campaign's entire tonal argument into one piece of film, requiring the idea to carry full weight without supporting executions to reinforce it. As a craft choice, the deployment of a recognisable contemporary pop song as the primary emotional signal — rather than voiceover, product shots, or testimonial — reflects a confidence in the idea itself. The lifestyle register of the work, emphasising personal freedom and the rebel outsider who ignores social convention, represents a coherent translation of the 'Go Bold' platform from brand strategy into screen. Production credits beyond Matt Waller's creative direction at BMB are not publicly documented in available sources.
No verified performance data for the McCoy's 'Go Bold' campaign is publicly available. No figures for view counts, earned media reach, sales uplift attributable to the campaign, or brand tracking shifts have been published by KP Snacks, BMB, or any industry body in sources accessible for this analysis. Assessment of the campaign's effectiveness must therefore rest on structural and contextual grounds.
The campaign's structural position was sound. McCoy's entered the 'Go Bold' launch with £108 million in retail sales value and fourth-place category ranking in the United Kingdom, as reported by The Drum — a commercially credible base from which a brand repositioning could generate measurable return if the creative landed with its audience. The simultaneous identity redesign, the brand's first in fifteen years according to The Drum, indicated that KP Snacks was investing in McCoy's at a systemic level, not running a one-off tactical campaign.
The fact that by 2017 McCoy's had moved toward a product- and flavour-led platform, as noted by LBBOnline, suggests that the 'Go Bold' lifestyle positioning did not become a permanent long-term architecture for the brand, though this trajectory reflects a common pattern of brand platform evolution rather than necessarily indicating failure of the 2015 work. Positive trade press reception at launch, documented by The Drum, confirmed that the campaign registered as culturally notable within the United Kingdom advertising industry. The Clapboard Score of 57/100 reflects a campaign with a clear and differentiated idea that faced structural limitations in a single-asset, online-only format, without the depth of execution needed to fully convert its strategic ambition.
McCoy's 'Go Bold' was a 2015 UK film campaign by BMB repositioning the brand away from 'Man Crisps' messaging. It featured a plumber singing Ella Henderson's 'Ghost' to celebrate authentic self-expression over performed masculinity. The campaign launched on 25 August 2015, according to The Drum, as part of McCoy's first major identity redesign in fifteen years.
BMB created the Go Bold campaign for McCoy's in 2015. The agency's Executive Creative Director, Matt Waller, described the central idea as rooted in the universally observed behaviour of uninhibited private singing, as reported by LBBOnline. BMB developed the campaign for KP Snacks, the UK parent company of the McCoy's ridged-crisp brand.
Go Bold reversed the logic of Man Crisps entirely. The earlier Publicis-created platform, running from 2012 to 2013 according to LBBOnline, used social embarrassment as its comedic mechanism. Go Bold replaced that with a protagonist who feels no embarrassment, reframing boldness as indifference to convention rather than conformity to masculine expectation in the United Kingdom market.
McCoy's was the fourth-largest brand in the UK crisps and snacks category when Go Bold launched, with retail sales value of £108 million in 2015, as reported by The Drum. It competed against larger rivals including Walkers, the UK's dominant crisp brand owned by PepsiCo, and Pringles, which maintained strong positioning through format and flavour-led marketing.
McCoy's Go Bold received a Clapboard Score of 57 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign with a clear, culturally differentiated creative idea that was constrained by its single-asset, online-only format and limited execution depth, which prevented the strategic ambition of the Go Bold platform from being fully realised across the United Kingdom market.
No verified award wins for McCoy's Go Bold are publicly documented in available sources. The campaign received positive trade press coverage in the United Kingdom at launch, with The Drum framing it as a notable creative shift in how McCoy's portrayed masculinity. No entries or shortlistings at industry award bodies have been confirmed in publicly accessible records.
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