Walkers launched 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' in January 2022, a VCCP London campaign uniting its full snack portfolio on TV for the first time after a UK
ARCHIVEWalkers Bets on Brand Love to Bounce Back in Britain
Walkers launched 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' in January 2022, a television-led campaign created by VCCP London designed to rebuild consumer affection for the brand following a temporary absence from UK supermarket shelves caused by supply shortages, uniting the full Walkers snack portfolio in a single piece of communication for the first time.
The campaign arrived at a moment of genuine cultural relevance. Walkers crisps had been momentarily absent from UK supermarket shelves due to supply chain disruptions, creating a rare opportunity for the brand to reframe consumer frustration as evidence of deep affection. Rather than explaining the shortage, the campaign leaned into the emotion it had surfaced: the realisation, common to British shoppers across the United Kingdom, that Walkers was something genuinely missed. The strategic ambition was not simply to announce a return to shelves but to remind the nation that no other crisp brand occupies the same emotional territory.
Devised by VCCP London, the agency of record for Walkers in the United Kingdom, the campaign brought together the breadth of the Walkers snack portfolio under a single unifying proposition. This was the first time the full range had appeared together in one campaign, a decision that served both a commercial purpose — showcasing product diversity — and a brand purpose, reinforcing Walkers as the definitive British crisp. The hero creative was a 30-second television film, supported by social media activity and in-store executions, and ran in the United Kingdom until 25 February 2022, according to VCCP. The campaign carried a multi-million-pound budget, signalling the seriousness with which PepsiCo-owned Walkers treated this moment of brand recovery.
ARCHIVEWalkers occupies a dominant position in the United Kingdom's crisps and savoury snacks market. The brand's strategic challenge in early 2022 was not awareness — it was affinity recovery after a supply disruption had briefly removed it from shelves. VCCP London identified that the absence had inadvertently generated a proof point: British consumers noticed, and they cared. The campaign strategy was built on converting that insight into a declaration of mutual love between brand and nation.
The savoury snacks category in the United Kingdom is fiercely competitive. Walkers' primary competitors include Pringles, owned by Kellogg's, and KP Snacks, whose portfolio includes Hula Hoops, McCoy's, and Tyrrell's. Both brands have invested heavily in product innovation and flavour extension to challenge Walkers' market leadership. The global savoury snacks market was valued at approximately US$176.1 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.2 percent between 2017 and 2022, according to SNS Insider. Potato chips represented roughly 35.6 percent of global savoury snacks revenue in that period, also according to SNS Insider, underscoring the scale of the category Walkers operates within.
Walkers' parent company, PepsiCo, is the global leader in savoury snacks and holds the Walkers brand as a cornerstone of its United Kingdom portfolio. The 2022 campaign represented a deliberate pivot from the celebrity-led eventisation that had defined Walkers' recent advertising history. As reported by Campaign Live, Walkers had previously reunited with the Spice Girls in 2019 and featured Mariah Carey in its 2019 Christmas advertising. The 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' campaign replaced that celebrity framework with a product-and-portfolio proposition, a strategic recalibration that positioned the brand's range — rather than its famous faces — as the hero of the story.
The 30-second hero film for 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' was shot entirely from inside the bottom of a crisp packet. This single production decision defined the campaign's creative identity: a perspective that is simultaneously absurd, intimate, and unmistakably Walkers. By placing the camera inside the packet, VCCP London gave viewers an angle on a familiar object that no one had ever consciously considered, transforming a mundane everyday experience — reaching into a bag of crisps — into something cinematic and playful.
Ross Neil, Deputy Executive Creative Director at VCCP London, provided the clearest articulation of the creative intent. As quoted on VCCP's own website, Neil stated: "We're really excited about this latest work for Walkers and the story it tells. From the opening of that iconic foil bag to the very last crumbs at the bottom of the bag and all the weird and wonderful ways we enjoy them in between." That framing — from first crinkle to last crumb — describes a narrative arc that is entirely structural rather than plot-driven, using the lifecycle of a bag of crisps as a surrogate for the emotional journey of the consumer.
The soundtrack reinforced the emotional register. Madness's 'It Must Be Love' was selected as the film's musical backdrop, a choice that is at once quintessentially British and unambiguously sentimental without tipping into sentimentality. The song's lyrical directness — love as an inexplicable, undeniable compulsion — mirrored the campaign's central proposition about the nation's relationship with Walkers crisps. The Drum, which published coverage on 18 January 2022 and included the campaign in its 'Ads of the Week' feature on 19 January 2022, highlighted the unusual visual device and the playful tone as the campaign's defining strengths, according to The Drum's editorial coverage. Production credits beyond Ross Neil's creative director role are not fully documented in publicly available sources.
No verified performance data for 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' — including sales lift, market-share change, brand-tracking results, reach figures, consideration shifts, or return on investment — is publicly available. The campaign has not been documented as a winner or shortlist entry at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, D&AD, The One Show, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
What can be assessed is the campaign's structural effectiveness. The creative platform addressed a genuine consumer moment — the supply-driven absence of a beloved product — with an emotionally coherent response. The decision to shoot from inside the crisp packet gave the film a distinctive visual identity that set it apart from category conventions. The use of Madness's 'It Must Be Love' provided a culturally resonant emotional shorthand for a British audience. The choice to bring the full Walkers snack portfolio into a single campaign for the first time created commercial utility alongside brand warmth.
The campaign's structural weaknesses are equally observable. Without a memorable narrative or character-driven hook, the film's unusual perspective is its primary creative asset, and that asset is a one-time reveal. As a television film it may reward a single viewing without offering a reason to return. The absence of any documented award recognition across major industry bodies, combined with the lack of published metrics, limits external validation of the work's effectiveness. Clapboard rates 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' at 60 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes a sound strategic idea with genuine craft but does not reach the level of cultural impact or creative distinctiveness that would place it among the most memorable snack campaigns of its era.
'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' is a 2022 Walkers campaign created by VCCP London. It launched in January 2022 in the United Kingdom to rebuild consumer affection after a temporary supply shortage removed Walkers from UK supermarket shelves. It was the first campaign to unite the full Walkers snack portfolio in a single piece of communication.
VCCP London created the campaign as Walkers' UK agency of record. Ross Neil, Deputy Executive Creative Director at VCCP London, is the only verifiable creative team member cited in public sources. The campaign was announced by VCCP on 14 January 2022 and ran in the United Kingdom until 25 February 2022.
The 30-second hero film was shot entirely from inside the bottom of a crisp packet. This perspective transformed a familiar everyday object into an unexpectedly cinematic vantage point. The soundtrack was Madness's 'It Must Be Love', chosen to reinforce the campaign's emotional proposition about British consumers' affection for Walkers crisps.
Walkers launched the campaign directly following a temporary absence from UK supermarket shelves caused by supply chain shortages. VCCP London used that absence as a strategic proof point, arguing that the disruption revealed how deeply British consumers valued the brand, turning a supply problem into a declaration of mutual love.
No award wins or shortlist placements for 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' are documented at Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Effie Awards, The One Show, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards. The Drum featured it in its Ads of the Week on 19 January 2022, representing the most prominent editorial recognition the campaign received.
Clapboard rates 'Britain's Most Loved Crisps' at 60 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that pairs a sound strategic rationale with genuine production craft — particularly its inside-the-packet visual device — but falls short of the cultural distinctiveness that defines the most celebrated snack advertising of its generation.
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