How Just Eat, Christina Aguilera, Latto, Hip Hop and Opera Collided

After the phenomenal success Just Eat saw from its previous collaborations with Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry, the takeaway brand didn’t hesitate for a second when it came to collaborating with iconic musical talent for a third time. Its relationship with McCann London since 2018 was delivering everything the brand wanted.

“Every single iteration that we have done has continued the cultural impact that we had with the first iteration,” says Just Eat Takeaway’s global head of brand and campaigns Stuart Eaton. “Before we used talent, it was a little bit Marmite. Bringing in Snoop really landed in culture. Katy is widely known, but on TikTok it became a real cultural trend.” There were over 125,000 organic videos created just with the mnemonic. “That level of organic exposure is the type of thing that most brands would love to have,” he adds. Influencers, the general public, Just Eat’s restaurant partners and their staff were creating videos around it, none of which was instigated by the brand, apart from what it had put out there in its advertising. 

So by 2023, all the signs pointed in one direction. “It was a bit of a no-brainer to just keep things going,” says Stuart. 

From there, the challenges were apparent though. “We talked about a difficult second album with Katy. We talked about an even more difficult third album when we got on to this one. For us it's handing over to McCann. How do we continue to keep this fresh and creatively interesting, so that mnemonic, that earworm never becomes old?”

That mnemonic – the “Did somebody say… Just Eat” jingle – has become part of the cultural fabric. According to the brand’s research, in the UK, three out four people can hear it unbranded and relate it back to Just Eat. But there was a business challenge to answer around the surprising range of food and groceries that people don’t know the brand offers. “People aren't necessarily aware of the fact that they've got a massive quality range of different cuisines on that platform. So that was really important for us,” says business director at McCann London, Fran Goring.

Then there was the execution which, in line with the idea of something a bit unexpected, was going to fuse hip hop and opera. “When you're searching for talent, thinking about vocal range, there are only a handful of artists that can hit those notes,” says creative Stephen Yeates. “But we're also playing in that authentic hip-hop space as well. Those big conversations led us to the talent that featured in the ad, essentially.”

Thankfully, the calibre of star in the first two campaigns helped them connect with the right artists this time. “These people protect their personal brands. I think talent are looking at that and they feel like it's a safe space for their brands to interact with JET's brand,” says Stuart.

Finding the right people to land all of that was crucial. It needed to meet high expectations. Fran shares that whenever she tells anyone outside of the advertising and branding bubble that she works with Just Eat, the first thing they'll do is sing back the mnemonic, “which is wild,” she laughs. The next question is, 'Who were you using next?' “People just start throwing names at you. So there was generally a big level of excitement and anticipation about what we were doing this year. And I'm sure it'll come again next year. Every year kind of grows a bit more. How do you beat it? How do you keep pushing? Where do you take it?”

The talent combo they landed on for 2023 was pop icon Christina Aguilera (AKA Xtina) and rising hip-hop star Latto. “I can guarantee nobody guessed that,” asserts Stuart. “When I presented it to the senior leadership of the business, we’d managed to keep it really quiet. And they were genuinely shocked. I was surprised. This is a bunch of quite corporate people and some of them were fangirling over the fact that we got Christina Aguilera – there were audible gasps.”

 

Then it was on to writing a song that suited the brand as well as those stars, all the while delivering a very practical marketing message. “I think the fun and most challenging part of building the messaging, particularly around the song itself, was that you're trying to balance landing those core brand messages that are really important for us and the brand, whilst trying to create an epic track that everyone loves, that feels completely authentic to the talent you're working with,” says Fran. 

The process of writing the track took months. The team at McCann London started off writing the song, built a demo, took that demo to Christina  and Latto to, as Fran puts it, “sprinkle their magic,” but without knowing where they’d take it. “You need their level of expertise. This is what they're amazing at. So we've got something we instinctively feel really excited about. The scary bit is we know it's got to do a certain job, but we don't necessarily know what the end result is going to be. So there is an element of faith you have to put in the process and trust. 

“There are obviously lots of conversations we had with the talent. Both Christina and Latto were so collaborative in building a track that we all felt really excited. It took a long time to get there, but we were so happy with the result.”

Stephen highlights that opera isn’t the most forgiving of genres. “You have to handle that with care,” he laughs. “On paper it feels new. And then when you move into the writing and demo process, the days leading up to getting that demo, you're like, 'Is this gonna work?' We knew we had a banger on our hands. Despite any of the other challenges we faced later on in the process, we kept coming back to saying it will be OK because this is a track that works. It was a good solid foundation to build on.”

Trust needed to flow in all directions on this project. “That's been key to our relationship with McCann London and the creative process,” says Stuart. “I think the best thing we can do a lot of times, as the brand team, is just get out of the way. Giving the space to the creatives to work and to take it in the direction that they want, to work through what's going to work and what's not, has been key to our success. Respecting everybody's process and boundaries to make sure that we get to the right creative.”

The team on the agency side felt this. Despite the number of senior people with views on such an ambitious campaign, Fran recognises the space that JET created for McCann London to get to where they did. “There are always going to be moments when you need to have really frank conversations, be totally honest about how you're feeling, which we've always been able to do. The good conversations are always really easy, but the hard conversations have never been an issue because of the relationship we've built. You need that.”

For Stephen as a creative, the power of a good client-agency relationship is when a client isn't looking over your shoulder every day, but brings feedback when it’s needed. “You want them to bring fresh eyes. You want them to see this thing new every time they review a piece of work. We have that trust that JET feel they can let us have a run of things with a bit of breathing space and then come to things as new. It's a dynamic that works and hopefully is evident in the result.”

In fact, although Stuart is the client to McCann London, when he’s in JET he sees his job as protecting the integrity of the creative. “My role whilst this creative process is going on is almost keeping everybody at bay – listening to everybody and what they want to get out of that campaign, but also making sure we keep it single-minded to the objective of this particular campaign.”

The first heart-in-mouth moment was when the finished track came back from Christina and Latto.”We all remember exactly where we were when we heard it,” says Fran. “It was like a combination of euphoria, excitement and relief, because you really don't know what you were gonna get back. As soon as we heard it, we were so relieved and excited. All of that level of pressure building up to that moment ebbs away.” 

Once the song was recorded, it was time to make a music video extravaganza. And working with Christina and Latto is a job best handled by a director who can deal with stars of that scale. JET and the McCann teams had a relationship with Dave Meyers from the Katy Perry campaign, so he had skin in the game. “He can make a pretty good music video,” says Stuart in a whopper of an understatement. “So when it became clear that we had the opportunity to work with Dave again, we were able to give him the theme, the script and he didn't actually have to mess with it, because it's not a hugely narrative-driven ad. It's kind of a spectacle. And that is what Dave specialises in. He can create music videos that hit particular beats and deliver nuance, but he can also do the Hollywood thing, as well. And we wanted scale. We wanted this to not hold back as an ad.

“Dave kind of became the inevitable choice in a good way. He knew the brand. He knew the talent we wanted to get involved. He's worked with everyone as well. So we knew we were in good hands.”

Fran remembers when the agency first saw Dave’s treatment. “It was probably one of the easiest bid meetings we've ever had. And in theory, it should have been quite a difficult one, knowing the pressure, the level of expectation and the choices that you have to make, but we were all unanimously on the same page. He just brought it to life beyond our kind of wildest dreams. The level of craft he added to that process was incredible.”

That was necessary, because trying to pull together a campaign of this scale with two talents, each with their own needs, was a balancing act. Each has an extensive team and a personal brand to protect. It was almost like working with three brands on set.