Case Study: The Higgidy Sofa Supper Club

When Aduro Communications was tasked with creating a stand-out ‘WOW’ moment for pie brand Higgidy, the agency came up with the world’s first ‘Sofa Supper Club’ with the help of Gogglebox stars Chris Steed and Stephen Webb.

Campaign: The Higgidy Sofa Supper Club
Client: Higgidy
PR Team: Aduro Communications
Timing: October 2015
Budget: £40,000

Objectives

Business Objective:
• Increase prompted awareness of Higgidy.

Communication Objectives:
• Own a moment in time as the ‘pie eating occasion’.
• Reach a new, ‘commuter’ audience as well as the ‘core’ Higgidy audience profile.
• Generate cut-through coverage in high-reach titles.
• Increase brand awareness against a target of 0.5% increase in prompted awareness.
• Drive consumer traffic to the Higgidy website, against a target of 10,000 site hits.
• Reach key business stakeholders with activity to strengthen retailer relationships.

Strategy

Our strategy for the campaign was as follows:
• Create a stand-out ‘WOW’ moment to engage new audiences.
• Underpin media story with research based stats to provide credibility and a ‘moment in time’.
• Utilise a celebrity ambassador to generate cut-through coverage – ambassador must appeal to new ‘commuter’ audience without alienating ‘core’ Higgidy audience.
• Create strong media assets that achieve cut-through for both audiences.
• Deliver a ‘Higgidy’ brand experience for press, consumers and key business stakeholders.

Based on insight that 75% of consumers haven’t decided what they’re making for dinner at 4pm on a Friday night, we identified the ‘Friday Night In’ as the ideal eating occasion for Higgidy. On a Friday evening consumers are tired, want to relax and feel they’ve earned a reward after a hectic week. We want a treat dinner but not a takeaway, something quality and comforting. Higgidy creates comforting pies that taste and look like you made it yourself but take little more energy than loading a baking tray… leaving you more time to sink into the sofa for the evening.

Coining a trend

We dubbed this eating occasion ‘Sofa Suppers’ – the new, socially-acceptable version of the TV dinner that gives consumers a delicious dinner that provides maximum output for minimum effort. To bring the trend to life for media, we created a Supper Club with a twist – the world’s first ever ‘Sofa Supper Club’, where you don’t book a table, you book a sofa, and dinner is served to you on your lap while you relax on a cosy sofa, just like you would at home.

Building a story for media

We launched the ‘Higgidy Sofa Supper Clubs with a number of media assets to access different areas of media.

Celebrity ambassadors: We recruited Chris and Stephen, stars of Channel 4’s most popular Friday-night TV show, Gogglebox as faces for our campaign. Known for spending a lot of time on their sofa on a Friday night, the boys added fun to the tone of the campaign with their own brand of humour, and are based in Brighton, just like the Higgidy kitchen, giving them several angles for media interviews.

Image assets: A photoshoot with Chris and Stephen and Higgidy founder Camilla Stephens gave us various image assets so each media interview received their own image, as well as different image assets for the microsite, social media and event news sell in. Images were shot in Chris’ front room like the well-known Gogglebox press shots, subtly branded and included the product in situ, being enjoyed on the sofa, bringing the ‘sofa supper’ to life visually. 80% of all press coverage contained one of our lifestyle images.

Consumer research: Consumer research conducted via OnePoll identified the 30th October as the night of the year Brits were most likely to stay in, the first Friday night since the clocks went back, and the date of our first Sofa Supper Club in London. Having this date allowed for front-end national news pieces, and cemented our activity with a ‘moment-in-time’ for media.

The Sofa Supper Clubs: Our experiential events in London and Brighton brought the Higgidy brand to life through dressing and served a range of Higgidy pies. Key press and bloggers attended a VIP sitting of each event, allowing them to meet Chris & Stephen as well as Higgidy Founder (and chief piemaker) Camilla Stephens one-on-one, generating not only event coverage at the time but also ongoing brand coverage beyond the Sofa Supper Clubs campaign.

Key retail stakeholders also attended and were entertained by Higgidy, providing invaluable relationship building for the business. Consumers also attended two further sittings of each event, all sampling product, and meeting the Higgidy team. Free places at the Sofa Supper Club events were allocated via a microsite from the Higgidy website, which was a call to action in all campaign coverage.

Results

• Brand awareness increased by 1.02% pre- and post- campaign (a period of one month), against a target of 4% for the year and 0.5% for this campaign.
• Coverage reached 37% of the new ‘Commuter’ audience 1.6 times each, and 31% of the ‘Core’ Higgidy audience 1.5 times each.
• 16,000 site hits were driven to the ‘Sofa Supper Clubs’ microsite by PR alone against the target of 10,000, with event tickets fully booked a week after launch.
• Key supermarket buyers were entertained at the London event, strengthening retailer relationships
• Circa 60 media hits generated in one month – including eight national newspapers, with a combined reach of 450 million.
• Reached over 2 million consumers via social media over the course of the campaign increasing social followings by 382%
• 100% press turn out at each Sofa Supper Club event – no media drop outs.

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