United Biscuits is giving away 3.5 million cuddly toys from McVitie’s ‘Sweeet’ campaign in the next step of the relaunch that began last year. 

Consumers will have a one-in-10 chance to win their own McVitie’s Sweeet friend of the four characters featured in the adverts: the Chocolate Digestives kitten, the Digestives puppy, the BN owl and the Jaffa Cakes tarsier. UB has invested £3m behind the on-pack promotion, which includes television advertising, PR, in-store POS, a social media campaign and media partnerships such as with Buzzfeed.

The competition will feature on more than 35 million packs across 36 different biscuit and cake SKUs, including the majority of the McVitie’s range, such as Chocolate Digestives, HobNobs and Rich Tea. Each pack will contain a unique code that consumers send in to UB via text. There will also be no-purchase-necessary opportunities to win a cuddly toy across McVitie’s website, social media and media promotions.

Jon Eggleton, managing director of UB, told British Baker: “We are looking to promote McVitie’s and this is the next stage. We had a fantastic response in year one in terms of consumer reaction and we want to build on it. This is just part of our 2015 plan - there will be some new product development coming out in the next six weeks.”

Sarah Heynen, marketing director of sweet biscuits at UB, said: “We experienced a fantastic response to the McVitie’s sweeet campaign last year and received a lot of feedback from consumers about how much they loved our animal characters.

“We decided decision-making is typically rooted in emotions and the more we feel, the more we buy. We are confident that is what the McVitie’s campaign will drive.”

Heynen said the campaign last year “delivered strong sales and growth”, pushing the company’s share of sweet biscuits to 26% as of September 2014.

Watch the latest McVitie’s advert below: