Laughing With the Customer – 2026 Digital Beacon Awards
There’s a circular saw strapped in the baby seat of the family SUV. How it got there is the storyline of a McCoy’s Building Supply digital ad. A man struggles to find room for his circular saw in a vehicle packed with the usual accumulation of family and DIY life. Then he spots an empty child seat. The saw goes in. He buckles it safe and secure.
The ad’s tagline: “The family car doubles as your work truck. We get you.”
It’s a quick visual joke, but it captures the idea running through McCoy’s “We Get You” advertising campaign: Show customers something about themselves that they recognize.
That approach won the San Marcos, Texas–based retailer the 2026 Digital Beacon Award for Best Advertising Campaign. McCoy’s, with Orgill as a distributor, was nominated for the honor by WD-40.
Other executions of the campaign build on the same idea. In another ad, a man arrives home and empties his pockets onto a counter. Out come his wallet, phone and keys, followed by a wrench, tape measure, nuts and bolts.
Tagline: “We never leave home without a tape measure either. We get you.”
Another takes the joke to the kitchen junk drawer. A homeowner repeatedly opens a kitchen drawer and produces an increasingly improbable assortment of tools and household items, including a reciprocating saw mixed among children’s toys.
This one: “Keep DIY within arm’s reach. We get you.”
Together, the 15-second spots make their point without relying on a price, promotion or lengthy product pitch. Instead, the tools become part of the characters’ everyday lives—and part of the joke.
A fourth execution shifts the tone slightly with a touch of (and an appreciation for) the work itself. A tradesman comes inside, sits on a bench and pulls off a work boot. A cascade of dirt falls to the floor.
The tagline: “Come as you are. Dirty work boots are always welcome here.”
Then these words pop up on the screen: “Hard work is measured by the foot.”
The ads speak to overlapping parts of McCoy’s customer base: contractors, independent homebuilders, farmers and ranchers, and DIYers. McCoy’s says its purpose is “to make life easier and more fulfilling for those who build,” and the company’s broader “Born to Build” identity provides a natural backdrop for advertising centered on the people who use the products it sells.
“What works about these ads is how quickly you recognize the customer,” says Chip Wade, HGTV personality and founder of Wade Works Creative, who served as a Digital Beacon Awards judge. “They find humor in details that builders and DIYers immediately understand, and they do it without overexplaining the joke. That makes ‘We Get You’ feel earned rather than simply being a tagline.”
Nearly a Century of Building
Understanding the building customer is a trait the company has developed for nearly 100 years.
McCoy’s traces its beginnings to 1927, when Frank McCoy started a roofing contracting business in Galveston, Texas. The family-owned company grew into one of the nation’s largest privately held building-supply retailers and today is headquartered in San Marcos. McCoy Corporation remains owned by the McCoy family and is led by CEO Meagan McCoy Jones.
McCoy’s currently operates 85 retail building supply stores with lumberyards across Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The company employs more than 3,000 people and also operates distribution and millwork facilities. Its three distribution centers in Burnet, Pharr and Midland, Texas, support the retail network, while stores provide job site delivery.
McCoy’s also offers digital options including online ordering, same-day store pickup and an app, extending the company’s service beyond the lumberyard.
Expansion continues apace, with McCoy’s having opened a store in New Caney, Texas, in April and broken ground in August on another Lone Star location near Canyon Lake.
Yet the winning ad campaign finds its subject in something more fundamental than the size of the company or the breadth of its operation: a tape measure in a pocket. Dirt in a work boot. Tools tucked into kitchen drawers. A circular saw carefully buckled into the family car.
They’re small details, and for McCoy’s customers, that’s precisely the point.
McCoy’s gets it—and also gets the Digital Beacon Award for Best Advertising Campaign.
