PR Case Study: Speed – Bidfood’s Christmas Gift

Speed Communications helped Bidfood to create engagement and resonate with customers who would be working over Christmas through the Bidfood’s Christmas Gift campaign.

Campaign: Bidfood’s Christmas Gift
Client: Bidfood
PR team: Speed Communications
Timing: October 2017 – December 2017

Summary

Bidfood, a UK-based food wholesaler, tasked Speed with coming up with a campaign that would create emotional engagement and resonate with customers. The result: Bidfood’s Christmas Gift – driving engagement through emotive storytelling.

Objectives

The campaign aimed to bring the emotion of the festive season to life and position Bidfood as a business which values its customers and the work they do every festive season. It sought to create engagement and result in high quality coverage that achieved the following metrics:

At least 70% to include a quote from a Bidfood spokesperson
At least 54% to include a link to the campaign webpage
All campaign communications include one at least one of its key messages
At least six social media posts from journalists who write for trade publications to encourage nominations

Strategy and implementation

Speed Communications started from the insight that around 92,000 chefs, kitchen assistants, waiting and bar staff work in hotels, pubs and restaurants on Christmas day.

With this in mind, Speed created an emotive campaign calling on customers to nominate the industry’s unsung heroes, who continually go the extra mile to make the festive period special for others and were deserved to be given the gift of Christmas back.

The campaign was orchestrated as a collaborative approach in close partnership between Speed and the in-house marketing team at Bidfood. It was timed to launch in October and continue through to December to ensure it coincided with Christmas.

Key campaign touch points included:

A campaign launch press release announcement designed to get coverage online and in October issues of trade media titles.
A robust social media strategy to generate internal and social media buzz and encourage Christmas gift nominations.
Press releases announcing the winners, tailored to specific industry sectors to ensure maximum pick-up and engagement.
The creation of an infographic which brought to life interesting stats and facts around the hours worked over Christmas in the industry. This was sent out as the accompanying image for the announcement press release and used as a visual on social media.
In-depth profile pieces on each of the winners.

The integrated campaign also incorporated everything from teasers encouraging nominations to in-depth advertorials revealing the resulting winners’ stories.

A panel of industry influencers was assembled to select eight winners across six key industry sectors, including Anne Pierce (Springboard), Peter Hancock (Pride of Britain Hotels), Mark Lewis (Hospitality Action) and Andy Jones (chair of the Public Sector 100 Group).

Winners included Rachael King, franchisee of a Subway who opens her doors to those less fortunate for ‘Arthur’s Christmas’, in memory of a local customer who had regularly visited the outlet but sadly passed away in 2016.

Results

The campaign created engagement across the industry, generating more than 100 nominations, dozens of social posts and 50 targeted pieces in key titles. Overall, it generated 300% more coverage than the brand received the previous year.

This initiative resulted in over 2,300 page views over the campaign period, with an average dwell time of almost two minutes (1 minute 45 seconds). It received industry recognition at the 2018 PRCA DARE Awards, where it won the Integrated Campaign of the Year award.

Bidfood’s board members were so enthusiastic about the campaign that they extended the prizes to reward every nominee with vouchers.