Musicians and recording artists have been used in advertising for years, usually playing themselves in commercials whilst delivering the odd line to camera. But rarely do you see them doing what they do best - and that’s making new music and performing. This is a story about how Just Eat partnered with an unexpected household name to reconnect with a key audience, utilizing his craft and unmistakable persona to deliver joy when everybody needed it most. And in the words of General Maximus Decimus Meridius, “Are you not entertained?”

Back in 2019 Just Eat launched a catchy new jingle – aptly named ‘Did Somebody Say Just Eat’. The infectious earworm had the ability to get inside your head…and stay there. But whilst people knew it, they definitely didn’t love it, and soon the internet hated it. Just Eat were bombarded with angry comments online. Some were straight to the point, proclaiming ‘ban this song NOW’ whilst others were more creative in their assessments, writing ‘this song makes me want to pull out my own teeth with pliers’. The brief was simple. Make ‘Did Somebody say Just Eat’ famous for the right reasons and convert all that brand hate, to brand love. All whilst cramming in more food than an all-you-can-eat buffet.

We decided to listen to the people and do something about our hated jingle. It was time for a remix. And there was only one person who turn it around, the king of cool Snoop Dogg.

Snoop took our tired old jingle, gave it a slick West Coast beat, and laid down some fresh new lyrics all inspired by his love of takeaway food – and no hip hop track is complete without a music video to go with it, all dripping in Snoop Dogg swagger. But it didn’t stop there. We brought Snoop’s legendary menu from his ‘From Crook to Cook’ cookbook and made them available on the app. But people we’re still hungry for more, so we teamed up with Snoop once again, to deliver Doggy Dogg Christmas, a full-length Christmas single, released officially on Doggy Style Records, and available to stream online.

Just Eat have over 36,000 restaurant partners on the app – yet the food delivery sector has become ever more crowded, competitive, and increasingly difficult to stand out. Just Eat needed to establish a point of difference. We had an ownable asset in the distinctive ‘Did Somebody Say Just Eat’ jingle and more food cuisines than anybody in the business, but we needed to land all this in a way that felt fresh, transcended advertising and landing in popular culture. Just Eat needed to be front of mind whenever someone young or old, got the munchies.

The artist needed to have universal appeal, a lyrical wit to their music, and most importantly be able to not take themselves too seriously – after all, they would be fusing the rap world, with the takeaway food world. There was only one person for the job, and that was rap legend Snoop Dogg.

The campaign was launched in 7 markets (inc. UK, France & Australia) on the 5th May 2020 and is still running to date. The campaign went live on TV/VOD and on social, where it was supported by karaoke subtitles to help people learn the words to the earworm and drive saliency, recall and engagement. In the UK we got influencers to recreate their own version of the video to help amplify the track even further. Naturally it lent itself to radio, where it blurred the lines between advertising and entertainment.

Doggy Dogg Christmas was released on Snoops own label – Doggy Style Records – and was available to stream on all major music platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music.

With this campaign we transcended the category and entered culture, embedding ourselves not just into people’s heads but also in their hearts. In the first 3 days of the UK launch it was viewed 4 million times and hit a record-breaking 98% net positive sentiment – with 24% of people who watched the advert on the organic Instagram post sending it to someone in their DMs.

We saw a +50% increase in consumers saying that they are more likely to order a takeaway from Just Eat as a result of seeing the advert and over two thirds of consumers also agreeing that the Snoop remix makes them feel more positive about Just Eat. To top it off, Google revealed it was number 1 in the top 10 most creative and engaging YouTube ads for 2020, whilst The Guardian newspaper labelled it as “the song that got us through 2020”.