McCormick Make Your Best Turns Everyday Cooking Into Cultural Currency
McCormick's 'Make Your Best' campaign is a 2026 US integrated masterbrand platform, created with agency of record Colle McVoy, that repositions the 136-year-old spice brand from a dependable pantry staple into a daily source of culinary inspiration for Millennials and Gen Z cooks who treat food as self-expression.
Launched on January 12, 2026, the campaign introduces the overarching creative platform titled 'Everyday' alongside the new tagline 'Make Your Best.' The work marks a meaningful departure from McCormick's previous masterbrand line, 'It's Gonna Be Great,' signalling a deliberate shift in brand narrative toward emotional resonance and cultural participation, as documented by Colle McVoy. At the centre of the campaign is a 30-second hero film called 'Every Bite,' which weaves recognisable food moments from beloved pop-culture properties — including Ratatouille, Harry Potter, The Muppets, and Lady and the Tramp — into original storytelling designed to surface shared food memories across generations. The spot functions, in the words of its creators, as a love letter to flavor and the memories meals make possible.
In the United States, the campaign deploys across a broad media mix that includes OTT, online video, programmatic, social, digital, streaming, and audio channels. Alongside the hero film, Colle McVoy developed a social-first execution called 'Stir Fry,' built for Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest, with a secondary execution titled 'Spaghetti' planned for the second quarter of 2026. The platform is designed to speak to what McCormick calls 'Taste Chasers' — culturally curious cooks for whom flavor is both a daily ritual and a form of identity. Clapboard rates the campaign 68 out of 100.
McCormick identified a strategic gap between its heritage authority and the expressive, identity-driven relationship younger consumers have with food. The brand's 136-year history, as documented by Colle McVoy, provided an authentic foundation, but the food and drink category has shifted: cooking has become a medium of self-expression for Millennials and Gen Z in the United States, and brand communications needed to reflect that shift.
The global spices-and-seasonings market is estimated at approximately 22 billion US dollars in 2026, with projected annual growth of around 5 percent, according to Fortune Business Insights. That same market is forecast to reach approximately 32.88 billion US dollars by 2034, representing a compound annual growth rate of 5.16 percent, also per Fortune Business Insights. Within the United States specifically, McCormick holds approximately 17 percent share of a defined spice and seasoning segment, according to Morningstar, placing it well ahead of competitors such as Olde Thompson and B&G Foods' Spice Islands, both of which compete for shelf presence and consumer mindshare in the same grocery channel. That market leadership position creates both an advantage and a challenge: equity brands in the food industry risk being taken for granted precisely because of their ubiquity.
The 'Everyday' platform addresses this directly. By anchoring the campaign in borrowed cultural formats — specifically, iconic cinematic food moments — Colle McVoy's strategy connects McCormick to emotional memories that already exist in the consumer's imagination. As reported by MediaPost, the campaign targets the intersection of culinary curiosity and pop-culture fluency, two defining traits of the Taste Chaser audience the brand is now publicly naming and courting. This positions the 2026 'Make Your Best' effort not as a product campaign but as a narrative brand investment, building long-term relevance in a competitive and growing US food and drink market.
The 'Every Bite' hero film sits at the creative core of the 'Make Your Best' campaign. The 30-second spot borrows visual and emotional language from some of the most recognisable food-related scenes in popular culture — Ratatouille, Harry Potter, The Muppets, and Lady and the Tramp — and intercuts them with original footage of real cooking moments to argue that great flavor has always been the quiet architect of meaningful experiences.
Lauren Colasanti, whose creative direction on the campaign is cited across coverage by shots.net and Colle McVoy, drew an explicit through-line connecting Martha Stewart, Lady and the Tramp, and Dumbledore as cultural touchstones capable of triggering visceral food memories in the target audience. This borrowed-format approach — classified by Clapboard's editorial team as a Parody or Borrowed Format execution — is a deliberate creative gamble: it relies on the audience's pre-existing affection for these properties to transfer warmth and credibility onto McCormick's spice and flavor range without requiring the brand to build that emotional architecture from scratch.
The production extends well beyond the hero film. The social-first 'Stir Fry' execution was built natively for Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest, recognising that the culinary self-expression behaviour the campaign celebrates lives most actively on those platforms. A secondary film titled 'Spaghetti' is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2026, suggesting a planned cadence of creative drops designed to sustain narrative momentum across the year. Tabata Gomez, Chief Marketing Officer at McCormick and Company, framed the platform's creative ambition in terms of cultural continuity, describing 'Everyday' as the brand's opportunity to remind existing consumers of McCormick's role in their kitchens while inspiring a next generation of cooks, as quoted directly by Colle McVoy. Jessica Henrichs, CEO of Colle McVoy, led the agency partnership that produced the full campaign system.
No independently verified post-campaign performance data for 'Make Your Best' is publicly available at the time of this analysis. The campaign launched on January 12, 2026, and granular metrics covering reach, brand lift, or sales attribution have not been disclosed by McCormick or Colle McVoy in sources available to Clapboard's editorial team.
What can be assessed is structural effectiveness. The 'Every Bite' film is built around a borrowed-format strategy — Clapboard classifies it as Format 12: Parody or Borrowed Format — which carries a specific risk-reward profile in the food and drink category. Borrowed cultural equity accelerates emotional recognition and can generate strong earned attention in the short term, particularly among Millennial and Gen Z audiences in the United States who are fluent in the source properties referenced. The risk is that the brand's own narrative can be subordinated to the properties being borrowed, leaving awareness with Ratatouille rather than McCormick. The campaign's tagline architecture — 'Make Your Best' layered beneath the platform name 'Everyday' — provides a brand-owned anchor that mitigates this risk, giving the audience a McCormick-specific idea to take away alongside the cultural references.
Coverage of the campaign's launch appeared in shots.net on January 15, 2026, and across multiple reports by MediaPost, indicating meaningful industry attention in the weeks following launch. McCormick's established market position, as noted by Morningstar, provides a strong distribution foundation from which the 'Everyday' platform can build frequency and relevance across its multi-channel media mix. Clapboard rates the campaign 68 out of 100, reflecting a well-crafted execution with clear audience intent that is modestly constrained by its reliance on borrowed cultural formats over wholly original brand storytelling.
McCormick's 'Make Your Best' is a 2026 US masterbrand campaign created with Colle McVoy. It introduces the 'Everyday' creative platform and a 30-second hero film called 'Every Bite,' repositioning McCormick from a pantry staple toward a daily source of culinary inspiration for Millennial and Gen Z cooks, as documented by Colle McVoy.
McCormick launched 'Make Your Best' on January 12, 2026, in the United States. The campaign was reported by MediaPost and covered by shots.net on January 15, 2026, marking it as one of the first significant food and drink brand platform launches of that year, per those sources.
Colle McVoy created the 'Make Your Best' campaign as McCormick's advertising agency of record. Jessica Henrichs serves as CEO of Colle McVoy, and Tabata Gomez is Chief Marketing Officer at McCormick and Company. The agency also developed the broader 'Everyday' masterbrand platform, according to Colle McVoy's own documentation.
The 'Every Bite' film references Ratatouille, Harry Potter, The Muppets, and Lady and the Tramp. Creative director Lauren Colasanti also cited Martha Stewart and Dumbledore as cultural touchstones in the campaign's development, according to shots.net and Colle McVoy. Clapboard classifies this approach as a Parody or Borrowed Format execution.
Clapboard rates McCormick's 'Make Your Best' campaign 68 out of 100. The score reflects strong audience targeting and craft in the food and drink category, tempered by the campaign's structural reliance on borrowed cultural formats, which can dilute distinct brand recall in favour of the referenced pop-culture properties.
McCormick holds approximately 17 percent share of a defined US spice and seasoning segment, according to Morningstar, ahead of competitors including Olde Thompson and Spice Islands. The 'Make Your Best' platform reinforces that leadership by shifting brand perception from functional reliability toward cultural and culinary self-expression, targeting Taste Chasers across the United States.
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