[JUDGING] MXB Agency
Section: Video Campaign: Agency
Organisation Name: MXB Agency
Video Questions
Name Of Brandclient
Daybreak
Personpeople Who Runs This Campaign
MXB Agency
What Is The Name Of The Videovideo Campaign
Video First: The Daybreak Universe. Three campaigns, built from a recurring cast of characters Daybreak owns. Demon of Daybreak (Halloween 2025), Santa's Shortlist (Christmas 2025) and Sean, President of Daybreak (St Patrick's Day 2026).
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.
Objectives Of Campaign And Metrics
Social has changed. Attention is harder to earn, video is everywhere, and convenience is one of the most crowded categories in Irish retail. Everyone in it is posting, and most of it looks the same. So we went back through Daybreak's own campaigns to see what people actually remembered. The answer was Sean, a leprechaun who had fronted St Patrick's Day for years and kept getting asked about underneath the posts. He was the one character Daybreak had that came back. The other asset was Halloween, a season Daybreak had spent years becoming known for. On that we moved creators out of the front role, where they cost a lot and take the audience with them at the end, and built video-first campaigns around characters Daybreak owns. Creators stayed in support. That became the Daybreak Universe. It had two objectives for the year. Build recurring characters Daybreak owns, and grow brand awareness through them. Build salience for the value message and all four own-brand ranges inside one story rather than four: 9 Grams Coffee, Munch & Co Deli, Lickety Split and Big Night In. Combined reach across the three campaigns was 7.2 million. Halloween reach grew 48%, video views 42%. Christmas impressions grew 43%. St Patrick's Day reach was around two and a half times 2025. Every result is against Daybreak's own prior year, delivered on a budget that tightened rather than grew.
Video 1: Link To The Video Give Stats What Is The Videos Purpose
Demon of Daybreak. Halloween 2025.
FB - https://www.facebook.com/DaybreakIreland/reels/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/daybreakireland/reels/
TT - https://www.tiktok.com/@daybreakireland?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Reach 2,327,492, up 48% year on year. Impressions 9,226,564, up 29%. Total video views 9,639,978, up 42%. Cost per video view fell 31%.
Jeff is a new hire fumbling his first shift, played by a performer cast to hold a full day in special-effects prosthetics and still land physical comedy on camera. He turns progressively more monstrous as the shift wears on. Dry narration, real comic timing, and every sub-brand written into a punchline rather than cut to as a product shot.
Halloween creative in this category defaults to scare. Daybreak went for comedy, because comedy gets replayed.
The teaser had no product in it, no offer and no price on screen. In the most contested week of the convenience year, when the category competes almost entirely on promotion, Daybreak opened on a character nobody had met. It became the strongest of the core films, with over 260,000 combined views across Facebook and Instagram.
Before and After Your Shift, the roughest and most native cut in the set, took over 830,000 combined views. TikTok impressions nearly doubled, up 93% to 5.8 million, against an audience 44.9% aged 18 to 24 and entirely Irish.
Video 2: Link To The Video Give Stats What Is The Videos Purpose
Santa's Shortlist, Bring on Christmas. Christmas 2025.
FB - https://www.facebook.com/DaybreakIreland/reels/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/daybreakireland/reels/
TT - https://www.tiktok.com/@daybreakireland?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Impressions 9,889,456, up 43% year on year. Engagements 27,662, up 252%. ThruPlays and 100% views 341,625, up 14%.
Three rival elves compete to be named Santa's number two. Broseph Sleighbell, Holly Days and Elfis Presently, each with a personality worth losing to, each pitching a different Daybreak range: 9 Grams Coffee, Munch & Co Deli, Lickety Split and Big Night In. A winner is announced at the end.
The format is the idea. A competition gives every range its own film without the campaign fragmenting into four unrelated spots, gives the audience a reason to come back for the result, and gives Daybreak three characters out of one shoot rather than one.
Thirteen films ran in a single campaign, each built to be watched rather than skipped, and the volume came from writing three characters who could carry their own scenes.
A real competition ran alongside them, with prizes worth entering for, a Garmin watch, an Instax kit and a record player. It drove 3,561 engagements on its own.
Video 3: Link To The Video Give Stats What Is The Videos Purpose
Sean, President of Daybreak. St Patrick's Day 2026.
FB - https://www.facebook.com/DaybreakIreland/reels/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/daybreakireland/reels/
TT - https://www.tiktok.com/@daybreakireland?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Reach 2,559,620, around two and a half times 2025. Views 3,650,447, a little over twice the year before.
Sean has been Daybreak's St Patrick's Day character for years, and the reaction to him is what started the idea of a recurring cast in the first place. People kept asking underneath the posts when he was coming back. He was the proof the idea would work. Jeff was the first character built deliberately to it, at Halloween, and Sean is the first to come back under it.
In 2026 he ran for President of Daybreak, parodying an election the country had just been through, with staged scandals, dramatic voiceovers and Coffee Policy Briefings for 9 Grams. He needed no introduction, so the films could spend their time on the idea rather than the set-up.
Political satire from a convenience retailer is a real risk. It dates fast and it puts a brand in a conversation most retailers avoid. It worked because St Patrick's Day is the noisiest day in the Irish calendar and a seasonal post disappears into it.
TikTok carried 1,340,152 of the reach, 52% of the campaign, and TikTok-style cuts completed at 17.1% against 5.3% for the core films on YouTube.
Additional Information For The Judges
The Daybreak Universe came out of a comments section. Sean had fronted St Patrick's Day for years as a one-off, and every March people turned up underneath the posts asking when he was coming back. That is where the cast came from, and why these three campaigns were written as films first. The cast does not go away between campaigns. Jeff, the elves and Sean sit in Story Highlights and keep working long after the media stops, so the next campaign opens with an audience that already knows them. Sean needed no introduction in 2026, so the films spent their running time on the idea instead of the set-up. Three things came out of the year that changed how the work is made. Rough cuts carry the volume. At Halloween the most native cut beat the cinematic hero film by more than three to one, and at St Patrick's Day the pattern held on completion, 17.1% against 5.3%. Hero films still earn the opening, so both are now planned at the brief. Product belongs inside the joke. At St Patrick's Day the product-led films took the top reach across all three feeds, so the ranges are written into the story rather than added at the end. A broad buy trades depth for reach. Halloween grew reach 48% and impressions 29% while the deeper view metrics went the other way, which is the plan doing what we asked. Spend now runs to a fixed allocation per film, with a reserve for whatever the audience picks.