Being the tall poppy matters. Consumers have never been savvier. Absorbing information from so many different sources and channels, filtering and discarding the unwanted means it is making it harder than ever to win brand loyalty. But this isn’t news to Spider.
With a proven track record and an instinct for just ‘knowing’ what will work, Spider relishes the commercial challenges faced by some of the biggest UK and global food and drink companies as well as the start-ups, the ground-breakers, and the utterly quirky.
Ask for a route map to success, seek unique solutions, demand accountability and Spider is in its element.
Driven by strong strategic thinking and matched by provoking and innovative creativity, the Spider team can deliver transformative, integrated PR, social and digital campaigns on message, on budget and on time. GUARANTEED.
PIECES OF COVERAGE ACROSS NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND BROADCAST
FULL-PAGE SPREAD IN THE DAILY STAR
UNIQUE USERS REACHED ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER
The UK’s irreverant meaty snack launched an advertising campaign based on filling the hole in your stomach left by so-called snacks. We thought of things we hate, that need filling (pot-holes, right!) and #HangryHole was born.
Disruptive and delicious in equal measures, our idea let loose the Peperami Animal on the Capital’s roads one February evening, for Londoners to wake the next morning to find pot-holes filled with Peperami and Fill Me flags, setting tongues wagging and thumbs tapping.
We teamed up with social media influencer Jack Jones for a prank-style video (million+ hits), and went UK-wide inviting consumers to send in pictures of pot-holes in return for cheeky Peperami pot-hole repair kits.
• Spider achieved over 59 pieces of coverage, including 12 nationals and mentions on Absolute Radio.
• Packs were also sent to the Barmy Army and English cricket clubs across the country.
• The crisps were requested by the Lord’s Taverners for their ‘Eve of Ashes Dinner’ and to top things off they were stocked by Tesco halfway through the campaign
We were approached by Tyrrells – the premium English crisp brand – to raise awareness for its range of snacks. The brief asked us to coordinate an ‘entertaining’ launch whilst nurturing the brand’s artisanal roots. We created Red, White and Blue Crisps in honour of the Jubilee, Cricket Tea Crisps and Red and White ‘Merry Crisp-mas’ festive crisps. In just three weeks, the Jubilee Crisps campaign secured over 40 pieces of coverage.
As a result of the coverage, Buckingham Palace requested stocks of the Jubilee Crisps to be served at the Diamond Jubilee Garden Party. The crisps were so successful that the Red, White and Blue crisps are now an integral part of the Tyrrells brand portfolio.
We created weird and wonderful Tyrrells PR antics around London, including bringing a reindeer into central London to launch its winter seasonal products and re-creating The Beatles’ iconic ‘Abbey Road‘ photo with a mariachi band. At all times bringing a true sense of English eccentricity to events, New Product Development (NPD) and launches.
Crisp, crunchy coverage ? it’s in the bag.
Pieces of coverage
Coverage reach
Return on Investment
Union briefed Spider, the creative PR Agency to help it retain its position as a pioneer in the coffee industry, nurturing existing and helping create new relationships with the trade and by positioning it as a craft business with a keen eye on sustainability.
The Agency’s creative PR recommendation was to extend Union’s position as thought-leaders in all things sustainable, particularly its founders Steven and Jeremy. In doing so, Spider helped Union achieve a louder voice not just in the coffee market but beyond, showing that a craft business could indeed be scaled
Successes included over 30 one-to-one interviews with the co-founders leading to full/half-page coverage in the Financial Times, The Times, The Sunday Times, Independent and The Sunday Mail. The campaign is directly attributable to helping Union win a Queen’s Award for Sustainability, being listed within the Sunday Times Fast Track 100: Ones to Watch and being chosen to supply the coffee for First Class and Business travellers on British Airways.
Union … coffee that can turn a casual chat into a proper conversation.
Pieces of coverage
Coverage reach
The fast-growing and ambitious company, English Tea Shop, is a leading ambassador for sustainable practices, making its employees and suppliers’ livelihoods its first priority and promoting the principle of value sharing.
In support of this Spider developed a compelling programme of profiling and thought-leadership activity based on all things green and good. This coupled with the company winning awards that recognise its CSR principles has resulted in Founder of English Tea Shop, Suranga Herath, becoming one of the most respected voices not just in sustainability practices but also in the wider business world where the company is recognised as one that leads by example.
Award winning campaigns from Spider – if it sounds like your cup of tea, come have a cuppa
ENGLISH TEA SHOP – a Spider client for 4 years and counting
Pieces of coverage
Impressions
Innovative cheese subscription service, The Cheese Geek, wanted to make a bigger splash over the key Christmas period to help drive sales
Spider was given an initial 6-month brief to drive awareness through key media and secure column inches in gift guides over the festive period. The results were outstanding and helped deliver a 266% y-o-y increase in sales. And the Agency was appointed on a retained basis!
Proving that projects are a good way for both client and agency to test the water.
The Cheese Geek – a Spider client for over a year and counting!
Pieces of coverage
Coverage reach
Average engagement rate
London food PR Agency Spider was tasked with helping to drive ongoing awareness of the new Peperami Beef variant amongst target 16-34 year old men with a creative, integrated and fearlessly disruptive campaign over Valentine’s Day.
Our response to the brief was to create ‘Beef Lovin’’ – a tongue-in-cheek Valentines campaign to help unlucky-in-love young Brits with relationship advice from our very own ‘love guru’, The Beef Animal. Consumers would find his suspect love advice unavoidable across multiple social media channels.
The Agency produced shareable content that made people laugh and feel positivity towards the Peperami brand. A takeover of all Peperami’s social channels by The Beef Animal ensured hilarious, engaging and shareable dating tips from the master of romance himself.
We knew the primary audience has an irreverent and risqué sense of humour so it was essential that we played to this…
Highlights from the campaign
• 1,013,803 post engagements
• 10,049 community members gained
• Activity drove higher penetration uplift (1.4%) on almost half the spend when compared to TVC (1.3%)
A big, beefy and horny campaign with massive depth and width across all channels…
Pieces of coverage
Coverage reach
Impressions
Throughout 2018, Peperami ran an on-pack promotion for 2-4-1 tickets to Thorpe Park and Alton Towers Resort. The integrated campaign ran across TV, OOH, PR and Social, the last two elements being Spider’s remit.
Highlights from the campaign
• Winning 6 Gold and 3 Silver IPM Awards
• 50,550,000 total impressions
• 5,042,468 16-34 unique year old males reached through advertising
• 3,454,452 unique Mums reach
• 72,012 website clicks
• 11,933,326 influencer impressions
Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called fearlessness – Spider has that in droves.
• Secured interviews with influential and national publications
• 50+ pieces of coverage, including 7 nationals, 1x broadcast interview (CNBC)
• Consumer interest achieved pre-restaurant opening in Autumn 2015
• Successfully introduced the Smashburger concept to the UK, building anticipation for the launch
• Positioned Smashburger as a key player in a perceived crowded marketplace
• Led discussions about the rise of the fast casual restaurant sector and the growing popularity of burgers
Smashburger, one of the fastest growing restaurant US concepts in history chose Spider to lead its launch into the UK market. Unknown in the UK, Smashburger wanted to be positioned as a leading “fast casual better burger” restaurant in a quick period of time.
Spider devised a corporate profiling campaign, generating interest in the brand, its unique “smashing” technique and highlighting its success to date ,and more importantly, its future aims for the UK market.
Using a joint interview approach, with a US and UK spokesperson, Spider conducted a media tour – enabling direct media communication of the Smashburger business concept. The campaign went live simultaneously with the US communications plan.
The US/UK “special relationship” in perfect international harmony courtesy of Spider.
Combined total reach
Average engagement rate
Food and drink PR agency London – Nature’s Finest, the UK’s no.1 potted fresh fruit brand, is on a mission to help mums and dads banish chocolate bars and gummies to encourage healthier replacement snacking options with a more naturally sweeter alternative.
Spider, food and drink pr agency London focused on using social media as a communication tool to directly reach UK parents (predominantly mothers with children aged 2-5). Through influencer collaborations, partnerships and a strategic paid media strategy, the Agency has demonstrated the benefits and versatility of potted fruit as a snacking alternative to children.
Spider’s challenge has been to create a memorable new look and feel to the brand’s social channels by introducing creative ways to introduce fruit into the diets for both children and adults to enjoy.
Getting fruity for all the right reasons.
NATURE’S FINEST – a Spider client for 5 years and counting!
New social followers
Average engagement rate on Facebook
Engaged users per month
Gin artisans and all-around cool guys Warner Edwards appointed us to help raise their brand awareness, drive increased engagement on their Warner Edwards Social Media channels, and help to secure a listing in Waitrose.
We had a crowded market, a surge of craft gins flooding retailers, and a content strategy that needed to wow not only our client but all those who had become fans not just of the brand, but of Tom Warner himself.
We worked to create a clear tone-of-voice to capture the essence of Tom, but ensured it would allow us to make the brand larger than one person; a way to guide consumers to understand the spirit of Warner Edwards and all it stands for. Due to limited listings, our paid social strategy needed to be highly targeted.
Our highly proactive approach to Warner Edwards Social Media community management meant that consumers felt heard like they had a direct line to the distiller and shared the passion of the founders.
Our targeted paid social program and strategic approach served Warner Edwards well in their quest for supermarket shelf space, and we all raised a glass on the day they announced their Waitrose listing!
In 2017, Warner Edwards won the Master Award for Social Media at the Distillery Master’s Awards.
Spider – making the results beGIN!
Pieces of coverage
People reached in the first two months
Average engagement rate
In 2017 the world’s largest coffee shop, Tim Hortons, briefed Spider to support its UK launch. In Canada, Tim Hortons is part of the social fabric with eight in ten coffees sold coming from Tim Hortons.
In the UK, however, Tim Hortons was known only by expats and Brits who’d visited Canada Our mission was to translate the brand sentiment for a UK audience. Leveraging the brand-love of the few to excite the many was a crucial part of our strategy, as was building a highly engaged Tim Hortons Social Media community.
Given the pre-existing levels of interest in the brand, supremely proactive Tim Hortons Social Media community management was a must; we left no conversation unanswered and left nobody hanging. This drove organic reach and helped us to smash through industry standards for engagement rates across our channels
Strategic content creation supported our work building the Tim Hortons Social Media community, ensuring the brand received a significant share of voice around product launches, key dates, and local events.
“#Canadian problem no 34- Tim Hortons withdrawal whilst abroad.”
The Agency did its damndest to help Canadians in the UK avoid this difficulty
Combined Social media reach
Total pieces of PR coverage secured
Total circulation
Purveyors of premium gin for over 150 years, Hayman’s of London appointed Spider to support the brand relaunch and the opening of its band new distillery. Being in the very crowded gin market, the challenge was to increase share of voice on social media whilst maintaining Hayman’s position as champions of ‘True English Gin’.
Using a combination of hyper targeted PR and social advertising, social listening and influencer marketing, The Agency encouraged city dwellers from all corners of the capital to experience the first ever gin-themed pop-up cinema in a working distillery.
With an ambitious hit list of media titles and with so much other compelling activity for the media to choose from, the Spider team had to convert journalists into serious fans who would be excited by the Hayman’s proposition!
The Agency delivered on its guarantee to generate rafts of coverage which drove ticket sales for tours and special events at the distillery but also achieved volumes of Hayman’s Gin PR coverage for the new pack designs – a particularly tough challenge with no new products to promote
Spider – was just the tonic the brand needed
Pieces of coverage
Posts social engagement
Spider, the creative pr agency in London were briefed by Luxury Irish chocolatier, Lily O’Brien’s with a dual task – support the launch of its new ‘Share Wisely’ brand positioning and drive sales and awareness of the brand in the run up to one of the key annual sales periods – Mother’s Day.
The Agency needed to create cut through and desirability for the brand amongst its target audience identified as ‘modern pacers’ – professional women in their 30s who pride themselves on having style and a sense of humour. With this in mind, Spider partnered with Radio 1 DJ and TV presenter Alice Levine – who was slap bang, profile perfect for the Lily O’Brien’s target audience
With Alice as the host, the Agency held an exclusive press and influencer ‘Share Wisely’ Mother’s Day event which generated considerable PR and social media exposure.
As Forrest Gump said “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
Spider well understand that life is like a box of chocolates, it’s just that at Spider with its unique guarantee you know what you’re gonna get!
LILY O’BRIEN’S – a Spider client for 3 years and counting!
Merchant Gourmet briefed spider to raise awarenss for its range of pulses and grains, with a particular focus on Puy lentils. As one of the leading merchandisers of Puy lentils, we soon learnt the importance of increasing consumption for the category as a whole and not just the brand.
With many consumers in the dark on how easily they can be incorporated into their daily diet, Spider proposed the idea of hosting a trip to Le Puy-en-Velay, the home of the Puy lentil.
Inviting key press and influencers on an authentic ‘Field to Fork’ journey that showcased the heritage and provenance of the humble lentil, and gain an insight into the history and origin of the Puy lentil.
Since July 2019, Spider has achieved over 50 pieces of coverage and a reach of over 29 million (29,255,000)
Combined reach on social media
Total circulation
New social media followers
Iconic biscuit brand Fox’s challenged Spider to raise awareness for all its npd whilst constantly remind consumers of its much loved, nostalgic core range
From Q3 in 2018, these included Chocolatey Squares, Party Milkshakes, an innovative Double Dough cookie, Party Ring buckets, and Extremely Chocolatey dark chocolate and raspberry cookies – a real taste explosion into a mature market.
The Agency’s creation of engaging social media alongside a mass influencer campaign, generated widespread exposure and significantly over delivered the guaranteed media results.
Fox’s, as a market leading brand chose Spider’s digital and PR expertise knowing that creative innovation would be baked into the service to get them the commercial results they need
FOX’S – a Spider client for 1 year and counting!
Samples given to the public
Total social reach
Pieces of coverage in top London titles
Average engagement rate on social content
The world’s largest meat snacking brand – was launching its biltong into the UK market and needed to make an impact. Working from their positioning of ‘feed your wild side’ and tapping into insights into their audience being adventurous and sporty, Spider , the food and drink pr agency in London was tasked with making the launch an experience consumers would never forget!
The Activation
Tapping into the rapid growth of immersive, VR technology, and our audiences hunger for experiences, Spider devised a world first – an immersive VR spin class at 5* boutique gym, SOMA House.
Working with fitness instructors and VR technicians, Spider delivered an event for media and influencers and then threw open the doors to consumers the following day.
15 top health and fitness influencers and 5 journalists attended classes on the first day, with all classes open to the public selling out
Buff bodies and Biltong, what better brand experience event?
The Results
• Conducted four separate sampling activities in one day across the UK for World Jerky Day
• Over 20,000 samples were distributed during the day, more than 5,000 per location
Positive consumer feedback including:
• There’s no better jerky than Jack Link’s
• I’m obsessed with jerky!!
• I have just tried the Jack Link’s beef jerky and it was so tasty I had to come out for another sample before it all ran out
The challenge was to create impact for Jack Link’s Jerky amongst category buyers at key supermarkets to get the brand front of mind with the buyers and category heads.
On World Jerky Day (there is a day for everything!) Spider set up sampling exercises outside the head offices of 4 leading supermarket chains: Sainsburys, Tesco, Morrisons and Co-op. The Agency also did another ‘midnight guerrilla activity’ and placed helium balloons on lamp posts, road signs and trees on the car journey routes the buyers would take to reach their offices
The helium balloons carried the Jack Link’s logo and slightly risqué slogans replacing the word ‘work’ with jerk from well-known songs: ‘hey-ho, hey-ho, its off to jerk we go’ and ‘jerking girl’
The client said: “it was amazing. Please come up with another equally disruptive idea for World Biltong Day” (so we did)
JACK LINK’S – a Spider client for 2 years and counting!
Pieces of coverage to date
Reach
Spider has been working with itsu on a retained basis to build brand and product awareness across both itsu [restaurants] and itsu [grocery] boosting sales and positioning founder, Julian Metcalfe OBE as a business pioneer. Helping to position the business as the brighter future of fast food through corporate profiling, trade and consumer PR, Spider has delivered exceptional results. In the last seven months alone, the team has landed 179 pieces of coverage in the titles such as BBC Radio 4, BBC News, Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times, Daily Mail, The Grocer, Big Hospitality, Delicious, Fabulous and more…
A Brand project for this famous range of high quality cheese for ARLA. Castello have a long history of creative and quality cheese, developing a wide range of traditional regional recipes and their own unique crafted cheeses, always made with natural ingredients and great attention to detail. Since 1893 Castello® has brought a balance of innovation and tradition to the art of cheese making.
We were the Brand copy consultants for this positioning by the client, creating consumer facing communication to deliver the concept of “taste profiles” a new way of connecting the Brand to the consumer in a very personalised way.
British Apples and Pears appoints Spider to handle its communications brief
Spider is delighted to announce that it is getting its teeth stuck into the British apple market as it is appointed by British Apples & Pears to handle its PR, social media, trade communications and website management.
Following a brief to increase awareness amongst consumers for British apples and pears, Spider devised a series of campaigns and activations to not only encourage shoppers to put apples to the top of their shopping list, but also shake up the sector and showcase the extensive repertoire of apples grown in the UK.
Sara Pearson, Spider CEO says; “I have always been passionate about getting British produce put firmly back on the map, which is why we are so delighted to be helping British Apples & Pears in their quest to achieve this. We have strong plans in place to drive awareness and engagement across a wide audience, whilst helping to get British apples firmly back onto supermarket shelves.”
British Apples & Pears is the trade association that represents British apple and pear growers. Formed in 1990, the body is led by a committed board of grower directors, who work year-round to promote the delicious and high-quality top fruit.
Pieces of coverage
Pieces of national coverage
Reach
We were approached by STRYYK – the non-alcoholic spirits brand – to raise awareness for its range of non-alcoholic spirits, including Not Gin, Not Rum and Not Vodka, promoting the brand as “All the spirit, none of the alcohol”. The brief asked us to drive awareness and boost sales of the range, establishing STRYYK as a key non-alcoholic player in the market.
We were tasked to overcome negative public attitudes towards non-alcoholic products on the market, and achieve cut through in an increasingly crowded market, increasing its share of voice in the no/low alcohol market.
Spider achieved over 68 pieces of coverage within 6 months, pitching to consumer media for product placement opportunities in the food and drink news pages, shopping pages, recipe pages, as well as pitching for round-ups in key sales periods such as Sober October and Dry January.
Spider was tasked to help consumers understand that buying British & Irish mushrooms means eating better tasting mushrooms; as they are fresher, higher quality and have travelled less than other alternatives.
To bring this messaging to life and drive awareness of British & Irish mushrooms, Spider drove an integrated PR & social media campaign which launched the Mushrooms Miles Report, a key consumer and trade insight which outlined key facts about mushrooms, how sustainable they are and the importance of shopping closer to home. Alongside the report, Spider also conducted a consumer survey which identified just how little shoppers check a product’s country of origin and how unaware they are of their favourite vegetables’ provenance.
To sit alongside the PR campaign, Spider also built up and managed a number of social media accounts for British & Irish mushrooms. In just a few months, Spider welcomed over 2,500 new followers to their platforms and generated a reach of over 3 million people.
Announcing the news to press, Spider generated 19 pieces of coverage across national, lifestyle and trade press, including larger feature pieces in The Guardian and Daily Telegraph.
Reach
Engagements
National newspapers
Spider was briefed to come up with a disruptive brand awareness activity to grab both media and consumers’ attention.
Peperami Animal reckoned vegans lead dreary lives, denying some basic pleasures………such as the delicious taste and flavour of a good sausage or beef bar. Animal was determined to give vegans a taste of what they were missing….
To grab media attention, Spider conducted research which revealed that 25% of vegans and vegetarians secretly miss the taste of meat and almost a third still enjoy the tantalising smell of it.
Off the back of this, on 31st January, the last day of Veganuary, Spider let Animal loose onto the streets of London, where he toured the capital, pumping out the smell of meat from a van with two large billboards in tow which stated ‘No one says Vegans can’t enjoy the smell of meat’ on one side and ‘Only one day of Veganuary to go’ on the other. Pulling up at key vegan hangout spots across London, Animal mingled with the crowd handing out samples of the brand’s newly launched Beef Bar.
The one day stunt generated seven pieces of coverage including three national newspapers. While the campaign was also successful across social media with a reach of over 1.6 million and over 250,000 engagements generated.
Pieces of media coverage
reach
Broadcast pieces
National Pieces
Oppo briefed Spider to raise brand awareness around National Ice Cream Month, in what is an incredibly crowded market.
To dial up the brand’s core USP – its flavour credentials – Spider worked with Oppo to launch the ultimate competition to win a year’s supply of ice cream and help to choose the next range of flavours.
Spider crafted a press release to issue widely to consumer media including nationals, consumer lifestyle, broadcast and regional publications. This was supported by targeted media and influencer seeding.
Reach
Engagements
Engagement rate
Everybody knew that the pandemic had got serious when we suddenly found ourselves without the option of heading to our favourite high-street restaurant or calling up our preferred takeaway house.
Instead, we all had to turn to home cooking, and this meant bad news for snacking brands like Peperami. On-the-go snacking was no longer happening, so Spider pitched an idea to get people using Peperami slightly differently: #PeperamiFakeaway – a playful parody poking fun at some top restaurant chains who had been releasing their own DIY cooking kits throughout lockdown.
Our PR team conducted some research to find out which meals the general UK public were missing most during lockdown. It turned out that dishes like Pizza, McDonalds burgers, Greggs steak bakes and Kebabs were top of the pile.
So, armed with the top 10 dishes that we wanted recreating with a Peperami twist, we teamed up with 12 top foodie influencers on Instagram that produced recipes to show their followers how they could have the perfect #PeperamiFakeaway
All this content was then shared on the influencers page and all Peperami’s social media platforms.
