Club Classic

Hellmann's wanted to join the brat cultural moment around Charli xcx genuinely rather than as an outsider borrowing a trend, and to remind fans that its mayonnaise is essential to any sandwich. The opening was unusual. Regulators had banned Charli xcx's sandwich bag tour poster, and the singer urged fans to bring sandwiches to her shows, an invitation a mayonnaise brand was well placed to answer. Condiment brands rarely enter pop culture conversations, and showing up uninvited risks reading as opportunistic, so Ogilvy UK needed a way in that felt earned rather than borrowed.

Ogilvy UK's answer was Club Classic, a free sandwich named after a track on the BRAT album, handed out in Hellmann's-branded bags that mimicked the withdrawn poster. The activation was a guerrilla handout to queuing fans at bp pulse LIVE in Birmingham, one stop on the UK arena tour, staged in December 2024. Influencers amplified the stunt on social media and paid ads mirrored Charli xcx's aesthetic, keeping the brand inside the joke rather than outside it.

The work landed because Hellmann's had a legitimate claim to the moment, and the banned poster gave the bags built-in recognition among fans who had followed the story. Content ran across experiential, social media and influencer channels. Trade press covered the stunt and credited Ogilvy UK, but no reach, engagement or sales figures have been made public, so its scale and commercial effect cannot be assessed.