ABOUT

We know Gousto customers crave the excitement of dining adventures that recreate the flavours of their favourite takeaways. Following the success of some of our most popular campaigns, we’ve seen that our customers love burgers and hot dogs, so much so they both ratchet up our choice, variety and excitement metrics whenever they’re in the spotlight. The challenge? Grow brand awareness, brand love and recipe uptake with an eye-popping campaign created for burger enthusiasts and hot dog connoisseurs.

Picture this. Two talented buns stand before you. One is a peanut satay hot dog sensation, the other a superstar spicy coconut chicken burger. Let the Battle of the Buns begin. You eat your way through mouthwatering burgers and hotdogs, all battling it out to be the nation’s next big thing. Only your taste buds can be the judge of this ultimate flavour showdown. Which bun will be your No.1?

The Battle of the Buns was a 4-week multi-channel campaign that appeared across digital merchandising, organic and paid media, PR and email – as well as digital advertising as part of a partner website takeover. The art direction was heavily inspired by TV talent shows we know and love, linking back to our telly-inspired headline brand campaign Steal The Show. With the kitchen as its stage, the campaign captured the high-octane energy of iconic primetime performances.

Dramatic spotlighting made our recipes the indisputable stars, while evocative blue and pink neon lighting directly referenced the rivalling talents of iconic music competitions. The use of neon in the world of food photography is rare given how difficult it is to make food both delicious and tempting under artificial lighting. We used generative AI to plan our shots and sync with flash to shoot images to entice and excite.

Video offered more opportunities to delve into the world of TV talent. We referenced pop-perfect television-style montages with our renditions, using photographic swoops and pans, vibrant neon lighting and dynamic camera movements.

The success of the Battle of the Buns campaign leaned heavily on fresh art direction, a unique concept and an exciting look and feel to achieve KPI-smashing cut-through.

Brand awareness: Battle of the Buns drove awareness of Gousto with a 997k (+28.4% vs KPI) paid social reach and a £1.66 cost per reach (CPR) (+31.3% vs KPI). PR activations attracted 73 coverage hits, generating a whopping 233m reach, as well as tripling blog viewership and uplifting average orders per user (based on 60k sends).

Recipe uptake: the campaign gave customers a new and exciting hook to try Gousto and achieved a Relative Recipe Uptake score of a whopping 1.98 (+49% vs KPI 1.0). RPS contextualises menu performance. The baseline recipe score for all recipes is 1.0, so a score of 1.98 means the menu was almost twice as popular as the average.