‘This is one of our first big wins’: Jnr lands Muffin Break
Coffee shop chain Muffin Break has appointed Jnr as its lead creative partner, marking the independent agency’s first major creative win in Australia.
Jnr — which has just recently hit one year in market — was engaged by Muffin Break late last year when it began looking for a “new kind” of creative partner.
Muffin Break first launched in 1989 in Coolangatta and has over 260 cafés globally. It said it was looking for a creative partner to help it enter the next phase of its “brand journey”.
John Marshall, co-founder and managing director of Jnr, told Mumbrella the brand is iconic, well known, and just about every Australian will have fond memories of it. The brand is now looking to appeal to new audiences and build its presence in market.
“They were looking for a creative partner to lead their creative into the future. So we’ve been brought along to do that strategically and creatively,” he said.
“It’s super exciting to be the lead creative agency for such an iconic brand, we feel very lucky. Everyone loves Muffin Break… We’re doing a lot of brand strategy and leading strategy in Australia but creatively, this is probably one of our first big creative lead wins.”
He said the future of Muffin Break’s creative will be about communicating what the brand is, and what it stands for, with a main goal of appealing to a younger demographic.
“We’re thinking of how we creatively articulate the iconicness of the brand, but also where they’re heading in the future, and we feel very lucky to be given this opportunity,” Marshall told Mumbrella.
“Traditionally, the audience is much older, you know, when I think about going to Muffin Break, I think about my grandmother and her friends, which is cool,” he said. “They still want us to appeal to that audience, but now we’re also showing that there’s more to Muffin Break than what people think.”
Younger families with kids coming through shopping malls, café lovers looking for a new spot with hidden gems, and students and young people are among the target audience.
In mid-2023, Muffin Break’s parent company FoodCo appointed indie agency Connecting Plots as its creative agency of record. The agency has confirmed it is still working with FoodCo and its other brand Jamaica Blue.
In a media release on Tuesday, Donna Oakley-Davies, general manager of customer and marketing at Muffin Break, said: “We were impressed by the jnr. team’s innate ability to truly understand our business opportunities, and work with us creatively to capitalise on them. They also showed a lovely down-to-earth approach and willingness to collaborate with our existing agency village.”
The appointment is effective immediately with the first campaign due mid-year.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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