Simulate is a plant-based food company. Since launching their marquee chicken nugget product in 2019, they have been one of the fastest growing frozen food brands in America.

Through a combination of provocative packaging design (the box has the picture of a chicken eating a chicken nugget), savvy PR, influencer endorsements, and a famously irreverent social presence, they built a “cult like” customer base in the U.S.

In 2021, the brand was launched in Canada with a distribution deal via McCain. We needed to recreate its success across the border.

We honed in on a cultural insight that would help us unlock the type of work we needed to set the internet on fire. It was inspired by the brand’s name, Simulate, and an increasingly central theme in 21st century living: questioning reality. Are you talking to a real person on the phone, or is it just a robot? Is that actually Justin Trudeau, or just a deep-fake video of him? Is that a bag of Doritos, or just a cake? Is that real chicken or fake chicken?

The brief to the creative team: make people question their reality. The answer, an animatronic flying chicken.