the task
Coco di Mama is a much-loved Italian food-to-go brand, serving everything from fresh pasta to filled baguettes, balance bowls and bomboloni. You’ll find it in its own London stores, on Deliveroo and, for a selection of favourites, in Tesco and Sainsbury’s. To most people, though, Coco still meant pasta. The rest of the menu deserved a wider audience, and with retail, delivery and stores each telling their own part of the story, there was a real opportunity to bring them together. Coco needed one creative idea to unite all three channels, put the whole menu in the spotlight and own that Italian summer feeling, all in time for the mid-May to mid-July retail peak.
the solution
Our answer was Made to be Craved. We conceived and built this platform based on insight around how people feel when they think about and eat Coco di Mama. Everyone knows what a craving is and feels like, nobody else in the category was claiming it and owning it, and it stretches just as easily to a baguette or a balance bowl as it does to pasta. One big idea, built to flex across every channel and outlast a single summer burst.
The creative world was built on Mediterranean light, generous portions and vivid, sun-soaked colour, shot to feel imperfect, human and joyful. Creative ran on digital 6-sheets in proximity to Coco’s London stores and outside Tesco and Sainsbury’s, with dedicated executions for Deliveroo and supermarket shoppers. We also built a paid social strategy covering stores, retail and delivery.
To give the press a fresh angle, we designed an original consumer survey on how and when cravings strike, and its findings became the hook for our press release. The survey shaped a voucher give-away activation too, on Thursday 11th June, we handed out £5-off vouchers at Liverpool Street Station and Cheapside from 7:44am, the morning craving peak the survey had uncovered, to get commuters trying Coco at the exact moment the craving hit.
the results
Made to be Craved was Coco di Mama’s first ever outdoor campaign, and it made quite an entrance. Out-of-home showed up in a big and impactful way beating its impressions target, paid social reached more than 1.5 million people and the survey story earned nine pieces of consumer press coverage with a reach of 4 million. In supermarkets, there were new products launched alongside the campaign, which sold fastest in the Sainsbury’s stores nearest our billboards.
Most importantly, Coco now has a creative platform built to keep going long after one summer. It’s part of a bigger story and trend about why Britain can’t get enough of Italian food, which we explore in our blog on why Italian food brands keep winning in the UK.
Our work with Coco di Mama demonstrates how Italian food brands can translate their distinctive identity into campaigns built for British consumers. Discover more about jellybean’s experience helping Italian food and drink brands grow in the UK. through creative, retail, PR, social, media and experiential marketing.
