How Spark Foundry made Kettle Chips front row in high fashion
The Media Plan
Is it ever too early to think about Christmas? As planners and buyers are already booking ads for the festive season, considering what worked last year is likely to be front of mind.
For crisps brand Kettle Chips, 2024 was all about finding a point of differentiation that could tap into passion points among its target audience.
“A brand recognised for its premium credentials, Kettle was operating in an extremely cluttered Christmas market and premium positioning alone was not enough to cut through,” explained Lynne Quinn, client partner at Publicis Groupe agency Spark Foundry UK.
So how to stand out? Spark Foundry, alongside WPP creative agency Ogilvy, designed the “Must Have Bag” campaign to align Kettle’s premium positioning with the high-fashion industry.
The must-have bag of the season? A packet of crisps.
Targeting fashionistas
Kettle’s campaign stretched across traditional media and social media. The initial launch was supported via OOH placements, based on footfall data, “at the heart of the UK’s fashion and shopping capital” — in London shopping areas such as Oxford Street, High Street Kensington and Westfield shopping centre.
TikTok, Meta and YouTube ads were placed to reach fashion enthusiasts at home and on the go. Spark Foundry overlaid snacking and hosting interests with fashion interests to target users in order to “sustain our message beyond just the Christmas period”.
Meanwhile, magazine double-page spread insertions were “key to amplifying the luxury message”, according to Quinn. Spark Foundry ensured Kettle was in the pages of Bauer Media’s Grazia and DC Thomson’s Stylist, with the titles picked based on circulation and readership data.
The media plan “looked beyond the issue at hand to plant the seed that would allow Kettle to grow brand metrics and consideration levels longer term,” Quinn explained.
“High-end, impactful, glossy pages helped us connect with our audience in places they may not have traditionally thought Kettle — or any crisp brand — would be,” she added, noting that magazines provided a sense of “physical touch” to the campaign.
Aligning with fashion made sense, Quinn added, because Kantar’s TGI data demonstrated that a “large proportion” of Kettle’s audience also resonated with fashion and spent more on high-end brands than the average UK consumer. This audience indexed highly towards magazines like Grazia and Vogue, and engagement with social media content relating to fashion and clothing.
Measuring success
The campaign measured success primarily via brand-uplift metrics. Post-campaign reporting indicated an 83% increase in ad appeal and an 82% uplift in purchase intent.
Quinn added that the activity also succeeded in terms of “sales data and retailer satisfaction”.
“We successfully made our way into consumers’ hearts and re-established our connection to the brand’s premium culture,” Quinn declared.
She added: “Our goal was not only getting back into our audience’s brain, bowls and baskets, but also being memorable.”