Marmite: Love it. Hate it. Smuggle it?

Marmite is a British staple. But for more than 120,000 British expats living in New York City, it’s hard to get your hands on or criminally overpriced. So we did something borderline criminal about it, treating Marmite jars like contraband to recruit an actual underground ring of Marmite mules smuggle jars into the US.

Here’s how the whole thing started spreading.

In the UK, we plastered the streets with low-fi recruitment posters and stickers.

We got over 250 texts an hour from Brits willing to smuggle the sticky black stuff.

Some smugglers were willing to offer more than their suitcase.

In New York, OOH targeted expats outside English pubs and overpriced British grocery stores inviting them to ‘Hire a Smuggler’ by texting a dealer on WhatsApp, naturally.

Once smugglers landed in the US, drivers were ready and waiting to pick up ‘the goods’. We then text expats where the drop would take place - a pop-up smack bang in the middle of New York’s black market hub, Canal St.

In the end, Marmite lovers living in NY finally got their fix with more than 250+ jars smuggled across the pond. And so far, nobody’s been arrested 🤞

Credits: Me (ACD), Clarissa Dale (ACD), Stacie Larsen (ACD), Richard Brim (CCO), Ant Nelson (ECD),
Mike Sutherland (ECD), Daniel Bonder (ECD), David Brown (ECD), Kimmy Harvey (PM), Mitch Horton (Design), Chris Lane (Producer), Henry Alex-Rubin (Director), Smuggler (Production Company).