Story

2020 left first-year students stranded in halls during one of the hardest periods of their lives. Just Eat wanted to do something genuinely useful for that cohort, not run a discount mechanic dressed up as empathy. The question was how to reach isolated students in the right cities, at the right moment, in a way that felt human rather than opportunistic.

Action

Working with Just Eat and McDonald's, we built a reactive care package campaign targeting first-year students in the UK's hardest-hit lockdown cities. Each package contained Just Eat credit alongside a handful of extras chosen to lift the mood — small gestures that acknowledged what students were actually going through.

To get the packages in front of the right people, we recruited micro-influencers embedded within the target universities — students who already had the trust and the audience we needed. Their content carried the campaign authentically into closed halls and group chats that paid media alone couldn't reach.

The strongest influencer content was then pushed further through paid social over the campaign weekend, driving both awareness and footfall to McDonald's.