[JUDGING] Daybreak
Section: Social Media Strategy: Brand
Organisation Name: Daybreak
General Strategy Questions
Name Of Brand Client
Daybreak
Name Of Brand Client Copy
This entry covers the ongoing strategy for the organisation, not a single campaign.
Personpeople Who Led This Campaign
MXB Agency
Do You Use Alt Text In Your Images And Caption Your Videos
Video is captioned as standard across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Alt text is not currently applied to still images. That's a gap and we're not going to pretend otherwise. It becomes a required field on the publishing checklist for every static asset from the 2026 campaigns onward, and the back catalogue gets worked through alongside it.
What Objective For Campaign
The objective had two halves.
Grow Daybreak's share of the four moments that matter most in convenience: Halloween, Christmas, Summer and St Patrick's Day. Every brand in the category turns up for all four with the same offers, most with more money. The aim was more people choosing Daybreak at those peaks, and more of them picking up the own-brand ranges while they're in.
And grow awareness across the whole year. Budget upweights hard into the four peaks, but moments get made between them, so the brand stays present instead of going dark for ten months and buying its way back each season.
The way to get there was an owned universe. The Daybreak Colleagues are the constant, the same faces behind the same counter all year. Around them the seasonal cast arrives and leaves: Jeff at Halloween, the Elves at Christmas, Sean at St Patrick's Day. Summer 2025 was the last campaign fronted by a creator. Halloween was the first fronted by a character Daybreak owns. The own-brand ranges live in the same world: 9 Grams Coffee, Munch & Co Deli, Lickety Split and Big Night In.
Three objectives sit under it.
1. Build a cast the audience recognises and returns for, season after season.
2. Give the own-brand ranges national profile through one story a season.
3. Beat Daybreak's own prior year at every seasonal peak on reach, attention held and audience built, on flat or falling budget.
Outline Your Strategy For This Campaign
Four moments decide the convenience year: Halloween, Christmas, Summer and St Patrick's Day. Budget upweights hard into those weeks, Halloween above all.
The method is recurring characters, written for social from the first line, never cut down from a TV ad. Jeff, the Demon of Daybreak, at Halloween. The Elves run Santa's Shortlist at Christmas. Sean takes St Patrick's Day. The Daybreak Colleagues run through all of it, which makes the campaigns one world rather than four mascots.
Between peaks the world stays open. Story polls, comment prompts and monthly pop-ups from the cast keep them in feed, and competitions land as attention builds toward each tentpole. A consistent value message runs through all of it, delivered by the cast, so the offer arrives inside the story.
System1's IPA analysis found campaigns built on a recurring character are 30% more likely to deliver large profit gains, and worth 12 extra points of share of voice.
Creator partnerships had fronted the seasonal work. They delivered strong, consistent results, but needed renegotiating each season and moved with trends that date fast. In 2025, while that format still performed, creators moved to the base of the plan and the cast took the front.
Every channel gets its own cut. All vertical, captioned, hook inside two seconds. Spend and creative reviewed weekly.
What Were The Outcomes For This Campaign Metrics Next Question
Year one of the Daybreak Universe opened at Halloween, and Jeff set the benchmark. Over 9.5 million video views, up 42% year on year, on a flat budget. The lift came from the creative: cost per video view fell 31%.
People are remembering it. Meta's estimated ad recall lift rate rose from 1.055% to 1.44% year on year, up 36%, which is the closest read available on whether an owned cast makes a brand easier to remember.
Brand visibility grew at every peak. Across the three campaigns, Daybreak delivered 5.4 million combined reach and more than 22 million impressions, up year on year at all three. Average frequency ran at 4.1, planned rather than incidental: salience is built by repetition, and a convenience brand has to be seen more than once at a peak.
Engagement grew across the board, and grew hardest where competition mechanics were planned into the story from the start. Christmas engagements rose 252%, with 3,561 from the competition series alone. The step change came once people started recognising the cast and answering them by name.
Attention held as reach scaled: Christmas ThruPlays rose 14% year on year, so a bigger audience was watching the films through.
The four channels reach four different audiences: TikTok 18 to 24 and almost entirely Irish, Instagram a balanced 25 to 44 core, Facebook a 35 to 54 base, YouTube Shorts the most even across age and gender.
What Are Your Metrics For This Campaign Real Metrics Please
Metric - Reach
Result - 5,449,454 combined across the three campaigns
Metric - Impressions
Result - 22,125,807, up year on year at all three
Metric - Average frequency
Result - 4.1 across the campaign windows
Metric - ThruPlays
Result - 1,111,810
Metric - Video views, Halloween
Result - 9,639,978, up 42% year on year
Metric - Engagements
Result - 27,662, up 252% year on year
Metric - New followers and page likes
Result - 1,958
Metric - Estimated ad recall lift rate
Result - 1.055% to 1.44%, up 36%
Metric - Cost per video view
Result - Down 31% year on year on a flat budget
Metric - Summer media efficiency
Result - Meta spend €2,400 against €6,500 in 2024, attention held flat
Impressions grew 29% at Halloween, 34% at Summer and 43% at Christmas. Of the 27,662 Christmas engagements, 3,561 came from the competition series. The 1,958 new followers and page likes break down as 253 on Instagram, 253 on TikTok and 1,452 Facebook page likes.
Completion rate is ThruPlays divided by three-second video views, not Meta's default denominator of impressions, which counts people served an ad who scrolled straight past.
Sources: Meta Business Suite, TikTok Ads Manager and YouTube Analytics, via quarterly PCA reporting.
Is There Anything Else You Want To Add Be Brief
The universe was not invented in a planning session. Sean has been Daybreak's St Patrick's Day character for years, and every year the same thing happened underneath the posts. People asking when he was coming back. That observation is what the whole approach was built on, and 2025 was the year it became deliberate.
MXB Agency is Daybreak's creative, digital and social partner, working alongside the Musgrave team as an extension of the brand. Concept, scripting, production, weekly paid optimisation and performance reporting sit in one place, across both the seasonal campaigns and the value message running between them.
That is what lets a character introduced in October still be working in March.
The Daybreak Universe is written, cast and shot, in a category that mostly posts offers and product shots. Three seasons in, the cast is doing work the brand used to buy in fresh every year, and it gets stronger and cheaper every season.