ABOUT

CONCEPT
Greggs teams up with Nigella.

For swathes of society, Nigella Lawson's festive TV shows are as much a part of Christmas as … well … Santa and the elves.

Recruiting a genuine British culinary icon whose unique persona and wonderfully indulgent recipes epitomise the height of decedent middle-class at-home dining as the face for our launch.

This was undoubtedly on no one's 2024 bingo card.

EXECUTION
To launch Greggs’ 2025 Christmas Menu, we created Greggs’ first ever “Christmas Advert”, which was fronted by the domestic goddess herself.

Nigella (described by one writer) “oozes as much indulgence as one of her own trifles” in the spot. The ad –created for its editorial and social value –was hailed “an unexpected, cheeky stroke of genius”.

Caught post-shoot by unexpected paparazzi, the hype for the campaign started two weeks early as Nigella was captured, leaving the shoot with a Greggs bag in hand. The resulting images landed on page three of the Mail on Sunday (the UK’s biggest-selling national Sunday).

From there, the news spanned across several media titles. Spinning the line that Nigella had “snubbed” promoting Greggs’ iconic Sausage Roll (she was never going to), the next wave of coverage landed –this time gracing storyteller’s holy grail: a full-page on The Sun’s page three.

By the time we came to launch the festive ad, we were already knee-deep in coverage while levels of enthusiasm and speculation had reached fever pitch. It was at this point we unleashed Nigella’s contribution to the festive season –and were the first brand to launch.

The ad premiered jointly on Nigella’s and Greggs’ Instagram channels, creating a wave of appreciation and excitement. Pre-sold stories hit the media, creating a further wall of news coverage. With the seeds of excitement sown, every title had its own take –from titles covering Nigella’s high camp and saucy delivery to settling of the row over sausage rolls to debate about whether Greggs had picked wisely in its choice of festive ambassador (universal answer: “yes”). Social media channels exploded with appreciation, declaring the unlikely pairing the perfect couple.

As another writer put it: “of all the Christmas adverts jostling for attention this week, had anyone expected a cheeky takeaway chain to come out in front?”. But come out in front, they certainly did.

RESULTS
Post-campaign YouGov research showed that 70% of the UK population were aware of the campaign.

Of those who saw the campaign, 74.4% said they were more likely to consider purchasing from the brand.**On the week of the launch, Greggs enjoyed a boost across all oftheir YouGov media metrics, including a 35% uplift in Buzz scores against the week before the launch, as Greggs and Nigella became the talk of the nation. The performance in Buzz scores and attention around the brand held over the weeks following launch as the conversation continued around all things Christmas.

According to Kantar analysis, the ad was top-3% for “positively surprised”, “brand difference” and stopping power.

Finally, while not solely attributed to this campaign, Greggs reported that Q4 total sales were up 7.7% while Q4 like-for-like sales rose 2.5%. So it undoubtedly delivered a commercial impact on the business.