Greggs, the UK’s leading bakery food-on-the-go-retailer, has launched its first above-the-line campaign this year, designed to promote its new coffee blend and position its ‘Always Fresh. Always Tasty’message.
The integrated campaign which comprises radio, national press, PR, interactive mobile advertising and social media activity, kicked off recently with a national blind taste test – the biggest ever undertaken by the retailer.
The @topsecretcoffee experiential campaign saw a uniquely branded van take to the road touring seven cities in seven days across the UK, covering 1,342 miles across Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff and Bristol, challenging the taste of the brand’s unique blend against people’s perceptions of popular high street coffee brands.
Throughout the week thousands of members of the public enjoyed a complimentary #TopSecretCoffee cup of freshly ground coffee*, which included a Latte, Cappuccino, Americano or Espresso. In exchange they were asked to participate in a short survey which asked for feedback on the coffee’s quality, taste, how it compared to their preferred coffee brand as well as who they thought the brand might be.
The majority of people surveyed (over 2,000) described #TopSecretCoffee as smooth, tasty, rich and strong, 92% of people described it as good, very good or excellent and 4 in 5 people thought the secret coffee brand was as tasty or better than their usual coffee choice.
Those who took part in the survey were emailed the following day where it was revealed the brand was Greggs and they were rewarded with a voucher for a further free coffee redeemable in any of the retailer’s 1,670 shops.
Video footage** also captured people’s reactions to #TopSecretCoffee, whilst a dedicated Twitter page targeted commuters on their way to work and encouraged people to tweet about their perceptions and who they thought was behind the campaign.
To further engage online, a uniquely hosted blogger event was held for popular food and lifestyle writers to sample #TopSecretCoffee with the aim of reappraising their opinion of Greggs. Bloggers were taken through a series of tasting exercises and similarly asked their views before they too were emailed with the reveal the next day.
Graeme Nash, Head of Customer and Marketing at Greggs said: “Coffee is a big focus for us this year and we want to remind the public just how great our coffee is. As well as investing in above-the-line activity, we wanted to bring the campaign to life by actually putting the product in the hands of the public to gain genuine and honest feedback. This has been the biggest blind taste test Greggs has undertaken on the high street and it has enabled us to really challenge taste preferences and brand perceptions. By focusing on our value, quality and freshness, we have developed a very compelling campaign.
He added: “We wanted to capture how the quality and freshness of Greggs coffee compares to other popular high street brands and the results speak for themselves – with many consumers preferring Greggs fresh tasting coffee over their normal high street choice.”
