We sold the meal, not the tin.

A recipe-led print, retail and out-of-home campaign that turns a store-cupboard staple into food people look forward to, across West Africa.

Create Tuna Burgers in Seconds poster in a chrome A-frame at the end of a supermarket tuna aisle

Client

John West (Africa)

Sector

Canned tuna · FMCG

Engagement

Recipe-led campaign · print, retail, OOH

Status

Delivered, rolling out

The brief

A famous product people buy on autopilot — and rarely give a second thought.

John West is one of the most recognised tuna brands in the world, trading on heritage since 1857. But canned tuna has a perception problem heritage doesn't solve: people treat it as a functional pantry item, not a food they look forward to. It sits on the shelf, it gets bought on autopilot.

For the African market, John West wanted to grow how often people reached for the tin — not by discounting it, but by changing what the tin means. The challenge: make a familiar, low-involvement product feel like an ingredient worth cooking with.

Our move

We stopped selling the can and started selling the meal.

Every execution leads with a finished, appetising dish — a tuna burger, a stacked sandwich, a bowl of "tuna ball" spaghetti — shot like restaurant food, not like a label. The tin appears small, in support. The headline promises the outcome, not the product: Create Tuna Burgers in Seconds. Our Tuna Steak Sails in Your Sandwich. The recipe is the payoff, printed right there on the ad.

Two decisions held it together. We leaned into the brand's maritime heritage as a tone of voice — playful nautical wordplay ("sails", "catch") makes a 168-year-old brand feel warm rather than dusty. And we kept every layout to one system — dish on top, green brand wave below, tin, recipe, socials — so a run of very different meals still reads instantly as one campaign.

The work

The sandwich campaign as a large painted billboard on a busy Accra street with palm trees and traffic

Out-of-home, Accra — the same system scales from A-frame to building. One idea, any format, any market.

Our Tuna Steak Sails in Your Sandwich as a full-page ad in an open food magazine beside a recipe page, coffee and tomatoes styled around it

Content, not interruption

Placed in a recipe context, the ad reads as content. The finished dish does the selling; the recipe on the page makes the promise ("in seconds") immediately believable.

Catch the Perfect Tuna Ball Dish poster framed on a warm kitchen wall above a worktop — At home, the campaign behaves like an appetite cue, not an advert.

The tuna ball ad open in a lifestyle magazine on a woven mat with the tin, tomatoes and chillies styled around it — Editorial flat-lay — the tin framed as the start of a good meal, not the whole idea.

The result

Delivered · rolling out

The campaign is delivered and rolling out across retail, print and out-of-home in the African market. Retail sell-through, campaign reach, recipe-page traffic and social growth on @johnwestafrica will be added here as data comes in.

What the work already gives John West is a shift in what the tin means — from a thing on a shelf to the first step of a meal worth making. A position that grows usage without ever touching the price.