Understanding McCain and adam&eve\TBWA’s Joyful Barrier Against the Manosphere: Dad Jokes

The cultural conversation around masculinity is currently dominated by the loud, toxic narratives of the manosphere. Brands often shy away from this space for fear of backlash, or they enter it with heavy-handed, preachy purpose marketing that alienates the very audience they want to reach.

But heritage British FMCG giant McCain and creative agency adam&eve\TBWA have taken a decidedly different approach. With ‘The Dad Joke Effect’, they are combatting the repression of joy in young boys not with a sombre lecture, but with radical playfulness.

Driven by insights from charity partner Beyond Equality and the strategic rigour of planning partner Lori Meakin – author of the recent book on gender dynamics, ‘No More Menemies’ – the campaign proves that tackling heavy cultural issues doesn't require a heavy tone.

As Lori explains, "There is so much negativity talked about men and boys, and there are a lot of problems out there. There are also so many men and boys who are joyous, wonderful humans, all trying to do something about that nonsense. And that just fills my heart with gladness."

When the industry attempts to tackle modern masculinity, the default setting is often to address toxic traits head-on or lean heavily on the ‘boys don't cry’ trope. But Lori and the team at adam&eve\TBWA knew that to build a genuinely effective campaign, they needed an insight that went deeper than the obvious clichés.

The strategic unlock came from the research behind Lori's book, ‘No More Menemies’, which examined the hidden barriers stopping men from engaging in gender equality. When paired with insights from Beyond Equality, a much stealthier issue emerged. It isn't just about boys being told to toughen up; it is about the systemic policing of their positive emotions, a process that begins far earlier than most marketers – or parents – realise.

"We're all familiar with 'boys don't cry' and boys being taught not to show vulnerability, but actually it's much broader than that," Lori explains. "There's all kinds of things boys are encouraged not to express, and it starts really, really young at six."

This revelation fundamentally shifted the strategic focus for McCain. Rather than targeting the teenage years, where the influence of the manosphere is already deeply entrenched, the agency zeroed in on the crucial developmental window of six to 11 years old. During this period, young boys subtly begin to edit their emotional behaviour to conform to outdated societal expectations.

As Lori notes: "The thing I found really shocking is that there's an equally powerful but not really talked about repression of joy in boys, who are taught not to smile, not to be playful, not to be sweet. That’s so tragic."

By pinpointing this specific behavioural shift, the agency avoided the trap of preaching, instead finding an authentic entry point for a beloved brand, behind oven chips and many other products, to intervene before the drift happens.

Once the planning team identified this repression of joy, the next challenge was figuring out how a mass-market brand should actually respond without alienating a mainstream audience or opening itself to accusations that McCain had “gone woke” .

To cut through, adam&eve\TBWA and McCain chose a simple, unapologetic joy.

“You can't always solve problems with the same degree of heaviness,” explains Lori. “Especially if you want people to engage, you need to make it positive, make them feel optimistic and make it feel easy.”

Rather than reminding parents of the dark paths their sons might go down, ‘The Dad Joke Effect’ provides a tangible, lighthearted solution. The campaign pivots away from the problem and leans entirely into the cure, using humour as a connective tissue to keep fathers and their pre-teen boys emotionally close.

“We really wanted to lean into the positive and create something that's really simple and actionable as role modelling to show what the answer can look like, because people are familiar enough with the problem,” Lori adds.

This strategic leap is what elevates the work from a standard campaign on a societal theme to a potentially effective behavioural intervention. It asks absolutely nothing difficult of its audience. By celebrating the silly, giggly moments that naturally occur when boys are younger, the brand is simply nudging fathers to maintain that dynamic as their kids grow towards adolescence.

As Lori points out, “This is all about encouraging them to carry on doing something beautiful and joyful that they're already doing, not start something new or change anything, and definitely not doing anything that's difficult.”

Delivering a message about modern masculinity is notoriously tricky; get it wrong, and you risk sounding like a sociology professor delivering a lecture. To ensure the campaign landed without alienating its audience, the team established strict parameters. As adam&eve\TBWA business director Lesley Smith points out, the brand's tone had to remain grounded and authentic. "We've always set clear guardrails that we never want to be preachy. That is one of the things McCain will never want to be. They never want to tell people how to behave."

This resistance to preaching isn't just about brand safety; it is deeply rooted in behavioural science. Lori explains that heavy-handed messaging often triggers the exact opposite of the desired effect. "When young men in particular think that their masculinity is under threat, they become much more entrenched," she notes. "If they feel like they are under attack, they will retrench further into the old school versions of masculinity. Being preachy never works."

Instead of a didactic script, adam&eve\TBWA relied on authentic casting to do the heavy lifting, reflecting a diverse reality rather than an idealised commercial cliché. "We've always been about reflecting and shining a positive light on real families up and down the UK," Lesley adds. "We've never shown the shiny 2.4 traditional family because families come in all shapes and sizes, and we celebrate that."

By capturing real interactions between fathers and sons, the campaign naturally portrays the multifaceted nature of modern fatherhood. "There are so many dads out there doing a beautiful and brilliant job... whether they're straight dads, queer dads, old dads, young dads, biological dads, or chosen family," says Lori. "It's just wonderful to find and show the positives and encourage more of that."

For a brand to credibly intervene in a cultural conversation as complex as modern masculinity, it needs to have earned its place at the table. Too often, purpose marketing fails because a brand attempts to hijack a cause it has no historical connection to. McCain, however, is not a newcomer to the dynamics of domestic life. As a staple of the British teatime, the FMCG giant has spent decades building its equity around the realities of the home.

The leap to ‘The Dad Joke Effect’ works precisely because it builds on the foundation of McCain's long-running ‘We Are Family’ platform and its historic advertising legacy. They are not jumping on a sociological bandwagon; they are simply zooming in on a specific, underrepresented dynamic that already exists around the dinner table.

As Laura Koscik, director, marketing at McCain, explains, "The ‘We Are Family’ campaign has always been about reflecting and celebrating connections within all kinds of families and homes. It’s good to be able to focus on relationships where people are feeling some worry, and approach it with a bit of positivity, encouragement and optimism."

This is particularly resonant for the six-to-11 demographic at the heart of the campaign. "Families have long been at the heart of our brand, especially those with kids in this age range," Laura adds. "We’ve always reflected positive connections within real families, and right now, the joyful, loving connection between dads and their boys felt like it deserved a bit of attention. We think dads are doing a great job and those relationships should be celebrated."

Lori agrees, noting that the strategy seamlessly aligns with the brand's heritage. "It feels so right for the brand that's about ‘We Are Family’," she says. "The brand that is famous for ‘Daddy or Chips’ has so much credibility, heart, and warmth around relationships between dads and kids in the home."

Yet, the team remains highly pragmatic about the scale of the challenge. Combatting the manosphere and undoing generational conditioning around male emotional expression takes more than a single campaign, no matter how well-targeted.

"We cannot over-claim the influence even a brilliantly well-loved heart of the nation brand like McCain can have," Lori acknowledges. "We are a drop in the ocean, but we hope a positive one."

For marketers, the ultimate test of any purpose-led campaign isn't just cultural resonance – it is hard commercial effectiveness. ‘The Dad Joke Effect’ is no exception. It is a strategic intervention that ladders up to a much broader, highly effective commercial goal.

As Lesley explains, "The overarching brand purpose is we want to always champion the power of together, what that means, and what that can achieve. We've always been about celebrating and encouraging those connections within families and relationships."

This focus on long-term brand equity is a hallmark of family-owned businesses, a structural advantage that famously helped McCain secure Gold at the IPA Effectiveness Awards in 2024. Rather than succumbing to the FMCG category's pressure to chase short-term performance metrics, the brand protects its margins by investing in deep, emotional resonance.

"There is something beautiful about McCain as a brand," Lori notes. "Their purpose of championing the power of together and a long-term effectiveness approach is absolutely fundamental to them."

Ultimately, combatting the manosphere with playfulness isn't just a nice thing to do; it is incredibly robust marketing. "This is all building on the really well-researched, well-documented evidence that shows long-term brand building based on really genuinely held emotions is incredibly powerful," Lori concludes, "and price elasticity is one of the key things in that."