The true value of an award-winning creative partnership

It’s not getting glammed up for a night of dancing and award ceremony speeches that makes winning so special (although we do love that part). For us, it’s about being recognised for delivering effective work for our clients. So when we won the Gold award for Best Integrated Campaign at The Drum Roses, and celebrated in our own kitchens, the sense of achievement really hit home for us.

There’s nothing we get a buzz out of more, than helping businesses solve their problems and realise their ambitions. We’re a collaborative group of people who care about our clients’ businesses as much as our own, and find that we achieve the best results when we work together.

Greggs approached us with the ambition of owning Veganuary for the second year in a row, following on from the success of the 2019 Vegan Sausage Roll launch, which took the UK by storm. A pretty big ambition, that’s for sure.

We realised 2019’s success would be a tough act to follow. In the agency, we referred to it as the ‘difficult second album’. We knew the nation’s eyes were on Greggs, eagerly anticipating their next move for Veganuary 2020.

Once we’d landed on the strategy of harnessing the codes of luxury brand product launches, and to position the Vegan Steak Bake as ‘this season’s must-have item’, the big idea was born: ‘the drop’.

We knew that the most effective way of planning and executing the campaign was to work hand-in-hand with the Greggs team. We wanted to make sure we made the most of the close relationship we already had with Greggs; fusing agency creativity with their expert knowledge of the category, their own organisation and the successes of 2019’s campaign.

Our boardroom became a weekly briefing room; sharing, debating and perfecting each element of the campaign as one team – every move was carefully planned out. We quickly got to grips with the challenges and potential obstacles of owning Veganuary once again, and we worked as creative partners to make sure we delivered a highly creative and effective campaign.

The campaign worked wonders – Greggs took 41% share of voice amongst competitors on social media on launch day, and in the 48 hours from launch, #Greggs and #VeganSteakBake were top ten trending hashtags on Twitter. Not only that, they ended Veganuary with all-time high brand metrics against their closest competitors.

The rewards are made all the sweeter when you learn the campaign you worked tirelessly together on has been awarded a Gold award for Best Integrated Campaign at The Drum Roses.

True creative partnerships are born when you care as much about a client’s ambition as you do your own, and approach each challenge with genuine enthusiasm and a joint creative spirit. These are traits that both our team and the Greggs team have in common, and which allow us to create effective and award-winning work like this.

You can get a taste of the campaign, and the results it achieved, in this short film. Enjoy.