[JUDGING] Daybreak
Section: Best Multiplatform Campaign - Paid
Organisation Name: Daybreak
Campaign Questions
Name Of Brand Client
Daybreak
Campaign Name
Sean, President of Daybreak (St Patrick's Day 2026). Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube Shorts.
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.
What Objective For Campaign
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. The Daybreak Universe came out of that.
So 2026 was the first St Patrick's Day where Sean ran as part of something deliberate, rather than as the annual one-off he had been.
The ground had shifted under him. Kantar has Irish take-home grocery sales up 5.2% in the four weeks to 22 March 2026, store trips down 2.6%, and 26% of shoppers describing themselves as financially struggling. Fewer trips, bigger baskets, tighter budgets. When there are fewer trips to win, being remembered before the one someone makes is worth more than being cheapest during it.
And on the day, people are out. Clover put Irish hospitality transactions on 17 March 16% ahead of 2025, and 39% above an average Saturday that month.
The objective that never changes is growing the Daybreak Universe, and two things had to happen at St Patrick's Day for that.
The first was Sean himself. Take the audience already asking for him and put him in front of far more of them, because everyone who recognises Sean next March is an audience the universe has already paid for once.
The second was to grow the ranges alongside him, with 9 Grams Coffee, Munch & Co Deli, Lickety Split and Big Night In living inside the story rather than sitting beside it.
Outline Your Strategy For This Campaign
St Patrick's Day unites the whole island, which is exactly the problem. Every brand in Ireland turns up the same day, so the noise is at its highest point in the year and a seasonal post disappears into it.
The way in came from Google Trends. Ireland's presidential election in October 2025 was still a live talking point five months later, so Sean left the shop floor and ran for President of Daybreak. Over-the-top skits, dramatic voiceovers, staged scandals. Political satire is not the safe option for a convenience retailer, which is why it cut through.
Two rules held it together.
Product carried every joke, because the day is a spend moment as much as a cultural one. Coffee Policy Briefings for 9 Grams, then the same treatment for Munch & Co, Lickety Split and Big Night In.
Everything was cut TikTok-first. TikTok is where satire lives now, and where drama-led verticals were built, the register this idea needed. Halloween and Christmas had shown that native cuts carry the volume while hero films earn the fame moment, so the short series led and the hero films framed it.
Platform roles came from Daybreak's own audience data: Facebook 35-54 and 61.8% male, Instagram 25-34 with 18-24 behind it, TikTok 18-24 dominant, YouTube widest with a 55-64 weighting and a 54.1% News and Entertainment profile.
A competition ran alongside to turn attention into interaction.
What Were The Outcomes For This Campaign Metrics Next Question
Against the first objective, growing the character: Sean reached 2,559,620 people, around two and a half times the reach of 2025, on 3,650,447 views, a little over twice the year before.
Against the second, growing the ranges with him: the Big Night In film on TikTok reached over 225,000 people, the highest reach of any single asset. Product-led storytelling took the top reach and view volume across all three feeds, so the ranges travelled inside the comedy rather than alongside it.
Every call in the plan shows up in the results. TikTok-first delivered 1,340,152 reach on TikTok alone, 52% of the campaign total. The repurposing rule proved out in a single cut: TikTok 2 was the strongest asset on TikTok for completion and the strongest on YouTube for TrueViews. YouTube returned 175,762 TrueViews from 440,004 impressions, a 40% rate, against an audience profiled 54.1% News and Entertainment, which is where entertainment-led creative should land.
The Halloween learning held, this time in completion. TikTok-style cuts completed at more than three times the rate of the core films on YouTube, 17.1% against 5.3%, and drove 69% of all full views on TikTok from a third of the assets.
The competition earned its place twice: the biggest single asset on Facebook by both views and reach, and 2,864 engagements, 52% of every interaction in the campaign.
What Are Your Metrics For This Campaign Real Metrics Please
Reach 2,559,620, around two and a half times 2025.
Views 3,650,447, a little over twice the year before.
Is There Anything Else You Want To Add Be Brief
A convenience retailer running political satire is a real risk. It dates fast, it can misfire, and it puts a brand into a conversation most retailers work hard to stay out of. Daybreak ran it because a character with a point of view is worth more than a character who only sells.
Sean needed no introduction, so the campaign spent its time on the idea instead of the setup, and reached around two and a half times the audience of the year before. That is the first thing a universe buys.
The bigger payoff is that the learnings stack up. Halloween established the mix: hero films earn the fame moment, native cuts carry the volume and the completions. St Patrick's Day added the rule that matters most commercially, that product and value messaging perform better inside the comedy than beside it, proved by the product-led films taking the top reach across all three feeds. Both went straight into how the summer campaign was planned and bought.
Each of the four seasonal campaigns now starts from what the last one proved, on the characters and on the knowledge.