Nestlé acquired Seattle’s Best Coffee from Starbucks back in 2022 to bulk up its category dominance alongside brands including Nespresso, Nescafe and Blue Bottle. But while Seattle’s Best Coffee was founded a year earlier than its former parent company, the brand needed a new approach to break through the category and connect with today’s coffee drinkers.

To that end, Seattle’s Best Coffee last month launched refreshed packaging and “May Smoother Coffee Bring Smoother Days,” the brand’s first national campaign in more than six years. Created by Los Angeles-based creative agency Haymaker, the effort spans national TV, digital and social platforms and positions the brand as a balm for when things go wrong — in humorously outsized ways. 

Actor-comedian Joel McHale (“Community,” “Animal Control”) serves as brand advocate and helping hand in a series of 15-second spots where a cup of coffee helps someone, whether dealing with an imploding car, a chaotic kid’s birthday party, an over-scheduled youth sports day or smart-home appliances being “super dumb.” A 30-second hero spot combines the first three vignettes. 

McHale connected with Seattle’s Best in a number of ways: he was born and raised in Seattle, grew up drinking the brand and even worked at a coffee cart. But it was the tonal synergies that made him the perfect brand ambassador for the campaign. 

“He really embodied that tone that we wanted to strike with the brand being optimistic but also really realistic: Life can be tough, and you have to find those little moments that can make it a little bit better,” said Courtney Backman, brand manager for Seattle’s Best Coffee.

All together, the spots put forward the newly redesigned Seattle’s Best as a warm and joyous cup of coffee that can help consumers get through the day. They also show off McHale’s dryly comedic chops.

“There's this great charm and wit about Joel McHale, he can bring warmth and optimism,” said Jay Kamath, founder and chief creative officer at Haymaker. “It was really fun to lean into that type of tone, and I feel like it's also helps it break apart from the sea of sameness in the category.”

Supercharged scenarios

The scenarios in “May Smoother Coffee Bring Smoother Days” are familiar — pre-commute car trouble, hectic days with children, malfunctioning technology — but the campaign finds humor in hyperbole. 

In “Kiddo Birthday,” a clown is hogtied in a wagon as McHale asks — in a line improvised by the actor — “Who wants to push the clown off the deck?" A father carries an impossibly large backpack of sports gear from which a child pops out to confirm that the coffee is 100% Arabica. Plus, the first sip of coffee leaves a warm spotlight on each drinkers’ face, a practical lighting cue effect suggested by campaign director Neal Brennan, who is best known for co-creating “Chappelle's Show.” 

“It was about finding scenarios that we as a team, at Haymaker and Seattle's Best Coffee, all felt were very relatable, but hyperbolizing and supercharging them in a way that they were equally as fun and memorable,” Kamath explained. “It made it very fun and to check the box of relatability, but heighten it in a way that made it equally memorable.”

The scenarios also lent themselves to cutdowns and the combined hero spot, which will air across linear TV, top streaming platforms, social platforms and influencer channels. The media plan and the creative mix are intended to help Seattle’s Best appeal to a broad range of consumers.

“Coffee is universal,” Backman said. “Making sure that we were showing a diverse range of consumers where people could relate to any one of those vignettes, and not only talking to one to one specific consumer, was really important in the brainstorming.”