Marmite's Dynamite jar lid crashed out of a 48-sheet poster into a car windscreen

Create outdoor work for the Dynamite launch that could cut through a locked-down Britain, appearing in Woolwich then London and Manchester, with social doing the reach the single sites couldn't.

One explosive image: a giant Marmite lid smashed out of its own 48-sheet poster into a car windscreen — the chilli spread's heat, literalised.

After weeks testing 'explosions every which way' — splats big, small and airborne, Pollock and Cornelia Parker references, bomb-disposal robots, bomb suits — the team realised 'the exciting bit was the lid'. The brand then ran 'branter' with Autoglass, Uber, Robert Dyas and Mini Cheddars, including tweeting @Uber for a lift home, capitalising on the Weetabix-Heinz Beanz buzz days earlier.

The OOH drew viral attention through the social interactions — per ECD Ben Tollett, 'a single poster site in Woolwich is never going to attract a huge number of eyeballs', but social media would ensure enough people saw it. The material reports no sales figures.

In February 2021 Marmite unveiled an explosive outdoor campaign for Dynamite, its chilli-infused spread. Created by Adam & Eve/DDB, the work showed a giant Marmite lid that had seemingly broken out of its own 48-sheet poster and crashed into the windscreen of a nearby car.

The making-of was a study in subtraction. Planner Will Grundy landed the 'Dynamite' positioning in, per ECD Ben Tollett, 'approximately 0.23 seconds'; the team then spent many weeks testing explosions every which way — big splats, small splats, airborne splats, inspiration from Jackson Pollock and Cornelia Parker, broken jars, torn labels, bomb disposal robots, bomb suits — until creatives Alex Lucas and Jon Farley realised that 'the exciting bit was the lid.'

With a single site in Woolwich (then London and Manchester), reach had to come from elsewhere: the brand threw itself into 'branter' on social, interacting with Autoglass, Uber, Robert Dyas and Mini Cheddars — including tweeting @Uber 'Can you get us a lift home?' — and riding the provocative Weetabix and Heinz Beanz buzz from days earlier. Tollett noted Marmite had 'had a pretty good lockdown', including press ads urging people not to waste spreads during 'the great yeast shortage' of 2020.

The idea distils a product truth — chilli heat as an explosion — into one physical image that photographs itself.

The weeks of failed explosions show the craft under the simplicity: the lid survived because it was the only element that made the story legible.

The branter strategy turned one poster site into national coverage by making other brands co-authors of the joke.

A single out-of-home site is a photo opportunity, not a media plan: design the image to be photographed, then let brand-to-brand banter carry it to the feed.

The Dynamite work was set to appear across Manchester and London as lockdown continued; the material records no later performance data.