Have an 'Aldi January' with McCann Manchester's Food & Fun Filled Campaign

We all go into the New Year with resolutions usually about being healthy, eating better and saving money. McCann & Aldi went one step further and created a TVC campaign directed by David Hartley to show how shopping at Aldi can help with all of these.

Moving on from the “Swap & Save” idea from last year, Creatives Gary Delaporte and Mick Craven created a new concept “Swap January”, to engage with customers directly in the New Year.  The premise of the commercials is to challenge people to try switching their normal supermarket to a new way of shopping – by using Aldi for a month to see if there is a noticeable difference.  

David’s fun, energetic and modern lifestyle film reflect this by showing what customers do in their day-to-day lives and how Aldi can make a difference.

Shooting over four days, David used multiple formats and styles to deliver a collection of looks. He used the Arri Alexa as the main beauty camera, a Red Epic on a Movi stabilised rig for the motion and action shots, a Canon 5D for the underwater and sea float rig scenes, and a Go Pro rigged up to bottles, go-karts, people for the POV perspectives.

The amazing food shots were filmed in graphic, close up "Food Blogger" style to keep everything looking fresh and colourful.

Finally to achieve really authentic enthusiasm, a group of genuine Swap & Savers who had done the challenge themselves were filmed.

“We had great fun chasing various groups around with our cameras.  My favourite moment from the shoot was going out with the wild swimmers who dived into a freezing cold sea with ridiculous enthusiasm, whilst the camera department stood around in North Face Parkas complaining about how cold it was out there. Cameraman DoP James Mather dived in with them… literally; he pushed the fully sealed floating camera around amongst them and caught some great shots. We also filmed a mother-and-baby-sling workout that was a joy to shoot, watching the mum’s in their choreographed gliding dance and workout routine. The babies all just hung there in their slings gurgling away and smiling.” David comments.