McVitie's invests pounds 12m in new breakfast offer.

Publicis has unveiled a pounds 12 million ad campaign to launch McVitie's new McV a:m snack range, which features consumers who find the products so irresistible that they steal them from other people.

The range, which includes chewy cereal bars, cereal bites, morning slices, muesli fingers and muffin bars, is supported by a combination of television, radio, press and bus-side advertising.

'We are targeting the morning eating occasion, anyone who doesn't have a traditional breakfast at home as well as those looking for that 11 o'clock top-up,' Fiona Keyte, a planning director at Publicis, said.

The main 30-second television commercial, called 'train', opens aboard a commuter train. A businesswoman sits next to a sleeping man and finds she cannot resist the packet of McV a:m cereal bites on his lap. She begins to pilfer them one by one. She also takes his morning paper to read and his headphones to listen to music. When the train pulls into the station and the man wakes up, she hurriedly tries to leave but is dragged to the floor in a tangle of headphone wires.

'Routemaster' is a ten-second spot set on a bus in morning traffic. The conductor slows the bus down to let a businessman who is running late catch up and climb aboard. But as he gets close the conductor sees the man's cereal bar, snatches it and drives on.

In the third ten-second ad called 'jogger', ...