Company: Clarion Communications Campaign: The Great British Warburtons Breakfast: Toast Smells and Toastie Knives Category: Best Use of Research - South - Shortlist Objective Breakfast is the most consumed in-home meal - yet is becoming ever more competitive as recession bites, with both bakery and cereal brands vying for consumer purchase, competing on taste, quality and health. Warburtons - Britain’s biggest bakery brand, and a Clarion client since 1999 - tasked Clarion with positioning it as synonymous with Breakfast, and creating brand awareness among two key audiences, to encourage purchase over competitor products. Activity was also designed to support ATL and digital activity. Target Audience Real consumer insight was required to develop a campaign that really resonated with consumers and generated word of mouth, targeting in particular two target audience groups: 1. mass market mums aged 35-44 (social media is a key element in their lives) 2. empty nesters aged 45+ Action Clarion utilised data sources (Kantar and Nielson) and commissioned independent research to create a ‘state of the nation’ Breakfast Report, which covered all aspects of the Great British Breakfast in 2012 - from media consumption and preferred food to regional nuances and celebrity favourites. News stories were created using the research to paint a picture of the UK’s breakfasting habits - so for example riding on the media’s interest in BBC Breakfast presenter Susannah Reid, one story was developed around Britain’s morning home ritual of ‘tea, toast and Susannah Reid’. Another media-friendly story highlighted the dramatic growth of ‘desk-fasting’, with 40 per cent of office workers questioned revealing they eat breakfast at their desk. One element of the research involved a psychological study into the emotive trigger of the fresh toast smell - and the results proved that eating toast for breakfast makes people happy and less stressed. To amplify this, Clarion spread the ‘joy of toast’ with a Warburtons Toast Card app, which allowed messages to be ‘scratched’ onto toast images and shared with family and friends via Facebook (the Clarion brief included both traditional media and managing Warburtons social media channels). Clarion also identified a potential breakfast need for the nation - confirmed via the research - to solve the age old problem of how to spread cold butter straight from the fridge. The solution: toastie knife, the world’s first butter knife with a battery operated heating element, to allow perfect cold butter spreading every time. Clarion commissioned Design Works to create a prototype toastie knife, and media collateral was created to support the toastie knife story including an infographic, YouTube clip and the hashtag #toastieknife. Results • 13 x national newspaper items of coverage • 10 x regional newspaper items of coverage • 45+ blog stories generated • 9 x online sites • Toastie Knife demo featured on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch (2 mins review), plus branded discussions on BBC Radios 2 and 4 • YouTube viral: 185,000+ views to date • International recognition of toastie knife, including Slovakia, a new Warburtons market • 500+ #toastieknife tweets (global hashtag requests for a toastie knife continue to date) • Great British Breakfast Report = ROI of 19:1 Warburtons senior brand manager said, "Toastie Knife achieved the PR Holy Grail: getting people talking about our brand and products." URL Toastie Knife: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E_DDsZ8bEM The PRmoment Golden Hedgehog Awards 2014 are now open for entries. Here are this years updated categories.