OXO Brings Stop-Motion Magic to UK Food Advertising in 2014

JWT London's Strategy for OXO Herbs and More in a Crowded UK Seasoning Market

The United Kingdom flavourings and seasonings category was valued at £455 million in 2014, according to Premier Foods. That figure established the scale of the competitive arena OXO Herbs and More was entering, one populated by established rivals including Schwartz, which holds a prominent position in the UK herbs and spices segment as reported by The Grocer, and Knorr, whose stock pots and flavour additions occupy significant retail shelf space across the United Kingdom. For OXO Herbs and More to carve out meaningful consumer attention in this environment, differentiation at the creative level was not optional — it was strategic necessity.

JWT London's insight was grounded in a simple behavioural truth about UK home cooking: the gap between raw ingredients and a satisfying meal feels, to many cooks, like an act of transformation rather than mere preparation. The product itself — a concentrated flavour pot — literally changes what is in the pan. The campaign's name, "The Magic Touch," articulated that transformation as something almost tactile and enchanted, rather than functional or nutritional. This framing lifted the product out of the utility register that dominates most seasoning advertising and placed it closer to the emotional territory OXO had historically owned through its long-running family storytelling campaigns, including the original Oxo Family platform, which ran from 1983, as documented by Campaign Live. The 2012 revival of that family narrative had already signalled Premier Foods' intention to reconnect OXO's brand equity with warmth and relatability for a modern, multicultural United Kingdom audience, as noted by Campaign Live. "The Magic Touch" extended that emotional direction through a wholly different creative form — animation — rather than live-action domestic storytelling.

PES, Stop-Motion Craft and the Creative Team Behind OXO's Magic Touch Films

BAFTA-winning animator PES directed the three stop-motion films at the heart of the campaign. PES is internationally recognised for a distinctive technique in which everyday objects are animated to stand in for food ingredients, creating a visual language that is simultaneously playful and precise. That sensibility aligned closely with the campaign's core premise: that OXO Herbs and More performs something almost magical on ordinary ingredients. The production company was Conkerco, with editing handled by Chris Rule and picture and post-production completed by Cherry Cherry, according to Clapboard.

The creative team at JWT London was led by Executive Creative Director Russell Ramsey, with David Masterman serving as Creative Director. Christiano Neves held the role of Head of Art and Art Director. Agency producers Leo Rowbotham and Carley Reynolds oversaw production on the agency side, according to Clapboard. David Masterman, speaking to The Drum on October 6, 2014, reflected on the cumulative momentum of the work: "The more of these we make, the more fun they are. Hopefully it shows." That statement points to a creative team operating with growing confidence in a format they had developed across multiple OXO campaigns.

The stop-motion format demanded a level of pre-production planning that conventional food commercials rarely require. Each film needed to be choreographed frame by frame, with the visual logic of ingredient transformation mapped precisely to the product benefit being communicated. For a category — Food and Drink — in which advertising often defaults to appetite appeal through close-up food photography and warm domestic lighting, the decision to use animation was a meaningful creative departure. In the United Kingdom market, where television advertising for food brands competes intensely for attention during peak cooking programming slots, the distinctiveness of the animation style would have served a practical recall function as well as an aesthetic one.

Measuring the Effectiveness of OXO's The Magic Touch in the UK Market

No verified performance data for "The Magic Touch" campaign is publicly available in terms of sales uplift, television ratings, digital reach, or brand tracking shifts attributable specifically to this work. What is documented, according to The Drum and Clapboard, is the scale of the investment: Premier Foods committed £4 million to the integrated campaign surrounding Herbs and More in 2014, a figure that encompasses television, cinema, sampling, digital, in-store activity and PR across the United Kingdom. That level of spend for a flavour pot product line indicates meaningful commercial expectations, even if post-campaign measurement has not entered the public record.

Structurally, the campaign possessed several characteristics associated with effective food advertising in the United Kingdom. The use of a BAFTA-credentialed director gave the films a production quality ceiling that communicated brand seriousness. The stop-motion format, rare in the food and drink category at the time, provided inherent news value and shareability. Helen Touchais, Flavourings and Seasonings Category Marketing Director at Premier Foods, described the campaign as "deeply enchanting" when speaking to The Drum on October 6, 2014 — language that reflects the brief's emotional ambition. The campaign's placement within a creative lineage spanning "The Magic Cube" and "Flavour and Shake" also suggests a longer-term brand-building logic, where cumulative exposure to a consistent creative world compounds recognition over time. The Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100 acknowledges the campaign's genuine craft merits while indicating room for stronger strategic proof points or more measurable consumer impact within the United Kingdom food market.