Our approach was to frame Fray Bentos as the culinary equivalent to a ‘decent pint’ in your local. Taking the brand into a space for down to earth, warm, friendly pub banter.
Our strategy was to assimilate all the elements of British pub culture to create an emotional warmth and humour with the brand, reestablishing Fray Bentos as an iconic part of British culture.
With pubs shut for much of 2020, Democracy established cultural relevance by owning the pie and a pint proposition with a wide reaching content marketing strategy, amplified through media partnerships. Content included:
Ray Bentos - Kicking off the new positioning was a series of videos, starring witty pub landlord Ray Bentos as he serves up a Fray Bentos pie and a pint in the comfort of his own shed. The style set out the new tone of voice for the brand and heroed the quality of the pie and filling. The advert was amplified using Facebook audience targeting and used at the start of the awareness funnel creating a base for future retargeting where the product credentials would be heroed. Result = 2,417,028 impressions.
Shed landlords - Tapping into the boom in at home pub makeovers, Democracy launched a shed landlord competition, encouraging people to upload a picture of their home pub to win a £1k bar tab and a year’s supply of Fray Bentos pies. To increase awareness of the competition with younger males, we partnered with It's Gone Viral. This site has an audience of 4.3 million across its platforms and deals mostly in humorous content that is snappy and shareable. 182 entries received generated a raft of authentic UGS. The winner (die-hard Watford FC fan Paul Thompson) was PR gold. Democracy amplified this, securing national press coverage in the red tops (The Sun & Daily Star - online and print) and with TalkRadio.
Hell’s kitchen - Legendary super chef Gordon Ramsay was unavailable to test out pub/pie positioning, but fortunately impersonator and TikTok sensation Scheiffer Bates partnered with us to offer his own Hell’s Kitchen style appraisal - designed to hero the product credentials and encourage others to reappraise what they knew of the brand. With reach guaranteed from the It’s Gone Viral media partnership. The video, which marked the biggest shift in tone of voice for the brand, was described by ‘Gordon’ as “f**king brilliant”, thanks to its fulfilling and beautiful flakey pastry and ended with him describing himself as an idiot sandwich for not realising what a great product Fray was. The video reached 1,500,950 users, achieving 577,747 views and 1,351,840 impressions.
Pie and a Pint - Democracy generated further content in the pie and a pint space reaching 100k people by working with seven credible micro influencers including @Southcoast_Kitchen and @TheSmokinEl in partnership with Hawkshead Brewery. Resulting content was repurposed for own channel in-feed content, achieving some of the highest engagement rates across the campaign.
