BACKGROUND
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In 2021, 12 of Britain’s best amateur bakers made their way down to the Great British Bake Off’s iconic white tent with hopes and dreams of being crowned the winner.

After yet another year of restrictions, last year’s Great British Bake Off launch felt even more significant. It was an opportunity for the British people to escape the everyday challenges of living in a pandemic and time to put some smiles back on the nation's faces with a weekly dose of sugar.

BRIEF

We were tasked with creating anticipation around the launch of the brand-new series by driving large-scale awareness and brand fame on a national scale.

We’d achieve this by using roadside digital 6s planned nationally in the week leading up to the show’s launch. Large format digital screens were also used to complement our awareness drive, delivering fame and higher impact.

For the large format OOH specifically, we used contextual creative that changed depending on the weather that day, helping to drive further relevancy and stand out.

However, the showstopper for this year’s launch campaign required something a little more signature. But did we have what it takes?

STRATEGY

When it came to the showstopper of our launch campaign, we decided that traditional outdoor media just wouldn’t do. The confines of a screen would limit our creative execution of crafting the best showstopper ever. So, we challenged ourselves to turn a location into a showstopping cake, complete with icing and a cherry on top.

And then we found the perfect spot ... a large, eye-catching building in a busy city centre.

We know what you’re thinking, could we turn a real building into a cake? Absolutely.

RESPONSE
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We transformed a colossal banner in Glasgow City Centre into our very own 74ft layer cake showstopper. Whilst the cake layers were printed, the baby pink icing drips on top were fabricated in 3D, so it really looked good enough to eat.

Once the cake was in planning, we explored ways to amplify this further and truly leverage the opportunity we had created. We wanted to add some theatre to the ground too but that wasn’t going to be easy without any readily available experiential space.

After weeks of negotiations with the local council, we finally got permission to open our very own space so we could install a giant 3D fork sculpture complete with whipped cream and a juicy cherry. The perfect Instagram moment for shoppers on the ground!

As we approached our campaign live date, we began to realize we had a real showstopper on our hands. The installation was almost certainly going to stop people in their tracks, and it would be a mistake not to leverage this opportunity to drive a lengthier engagement. We decided to add a further element and make our showstopper truly experiential.

We designed Channel 4’s first-ever GBBO fan zone where shoppers could come, take a seat, and check out the first episode. This was the perfect opportunity to spend time with the brand and share in the joy of the show.

RESULTS
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The nation loved it with swathes of tweets, posts and earned media helping to deliver 6.6m viewers on the first night and Channel 4’s biggest ever share of young people (61.9% share of 16-34s).

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