Perfect fusion 19

Perfect fusion When one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious kitchen goods companies decided to launch in the UK, it turned to agency MBA to adapt to the digital age.

Breville has immediate name recognition, yet the Breville brand in the UK is an entirely separate entity to that of the Australian original, which sells both there and in markets including America. A new, non-Breville brand would be needed.

It would also be launching in a cluttered marketplace where luxe gadgets compete for shelf space with basic and own brands – the UK has ample choice when it comes to mixers, toasters, kettles, juicers and coffee-makers. Certainly, nobody else had dared to launch such a comprehensive range all at once.

The launch would be supported by a minimal sales and marketing spend – essentially, the new brand would be operating in the UK as if it were a start-up, albeit a start-up with the heft of a multinational research and development department behind it.

It was against such a backdrop that Sage by Heston Blumenthal was born in Autumn 2012. The brand name, Sage, reflecting both wisdom and the kitchen herb was finalised only days before meetings with key retailers – five names were presented to a consumer panel, with Sage the overwhelming favourite. Wisely, the meetings were held at the Mandarin Hotel, the locale of Blumenthal’s iconic Dinner restaurant.

Earlier that year, Blumenthal had met with Breville in Sydney and a partnership was struck. Heston and Breville are perfect companions.

They both get food science. They both go to extraordinary lengths to make exquisite tastes. Heston is more than a name slapped on a product – he shares the same philosophy and is involved in the design process, where he will only agree to endorse the select Sage products that he believes are fit for his kitchens.

The chef’s name and fame gives Sage similar cache to that which Breville enjoys in its homeland, yet just as pivotal to UK success so far is the part played by its UK agency, MBA.

“We pitched to MBA rather than the other way round,” recalls David Gubbin Sage sales and marketing director. “We came [to the UK] with poor research and little money, without the luxury of time. We were presenting to retailers in the October for a May launch.”

He adds: “We didn’t know anything about the UK consumer, who acts totally different to any other market we are in.” UK shoppers, he says, are much more likely to purchase over the internet than in Australia and the US.

Gubbin Says, “On board as the brand’s UK agency from Day One, MBA became an extension of our sales and marketing department – their knowledge of the local market and the digital nature of building this brand was essential.”

If part one was reaching the retailers and persuading them to stock Sage at a profitable level then part two was about creating a consumer buzz around the new brand.

MBA became an extension of our sales and marketing department – their knowledge of the local market and the digital nature of building this brand was essential.David Gubbin - Sage Sales and Marketing Director

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Images. Sage’s Instagram – MBA re-posts content created by real-life brand ambassadors and customers.

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Images. VVloggers review Sage products on YouTube, key to MBA’s strategy of influencing the purchase decision.

The agency coupled its UK-specific knowledge of the changing nature of today’s buyers to Breville’s central brand tenets, which also infuse the Sage brand.

MBA managing director Paul Munce says, “Our sweet spot is where digital and direct interconnect and we were perfectly poised to develop a content marketing framework to reflect purchasing in today’s digital world.” Needing to launch in the UK’s highly established market without major advertising investment, Sage adopted Google’s Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) philosophy of purchasing as the framework for its activities. It stimulates interest in the product in social spaces and feeds engaging content into Sage’s social channels for the “research phase” – the ZMOT – of the journey when the customer is working out what to buy. This is where the social collateral comes into its own, and through engaging content, prompts the customer.

At the core is a philosophy of ‘simple moments of brilliance’ – products have to be better, faster, simpler and/or more engaging before they make the grade. Products might look great, but they need to perform better – to exceed expectations. It’s why, despite their high price tags, many consumers who buy one hero product will often go on to buy others in the range. At the core of the Sage brand is a philosophy

“We call ourselves ‘food thinkers’,” says Gubbin. “People want to get excited about food and thinking about food.”

We call ourselves ‘food thinkers’. People want to get excited about food and thinking about food.David Gubbin - Sage Sales and Marketing Director

Ellypear: OMG. The excitement!! This is enough to get you out of bed of a morning. I’m going to eat SO MUCH TOAST now we’ve got our flash new @

sageappliances toaster #toast #toaster #toasterama

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Sage launched in Spring 2013, infiltrating an already highly established kitchen gadgets market. This was the first time that such a full range of electricals, under a new name, would be launched. As such – and with a tight budget – agency and client knew that a traditional big brand launch would be both financially impossible and the wrong strategy for a new world.

Armed with MBA’s insight, Breville knew that the British customer shops for such products online, viewing and reviewing all the info-rmation to hand – from brand-led communications to vlogger reviews and independent star-ratings and comment on the likes of Amazon.

MBA managing partner Paul Munce elaborates: “The way people buy these days has changed, so the question was, how do we be there when they are looking so that we can influence them? We created content to answer people’s enquiries.”

Film is a powerful medium for food related topics. YouTube is often a first point of call (or at least the call shortly after Google searching) for people to find out about products and recipes. To speak to the inquisitorial nature of today’s consumer MBA uses Heston in ‘research’ phase content e.g. YouTube product demonstrations. Complementing this are a series of ‘how to’ demonstrations with a product expert to help customers get the most out of their product post-purchase.

The agency targets real life ambassadors – the bloggers and vloggers who are both influential and knowledgeable, sending them appliances to review independently. Some of the vloggers that Sage is now working with pull in over 500,000 views per video, whilst dwell time on its own YouTube channel has been impressive – the majority of viewers watch at least 70 per cent

The way people buy these days has changed, so the question was how do we be there when they are looking so that we can influence them.Paul Munce - MBA Managing Partner

Images. Above – Heston Blumenthal, at the centre of video content critical to success, gives demonstrations on how to use products. Below – Heston pops out of tea vending machine in busy London shopping centre, as part of viral social object.

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#JuiceLove

Australian juicer Joe Cross is something of a phenomenon in wellness circles. The author, filmmaker and wellness advocate was overweight and ill when he started a 60-day juice diet, documented in the film Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. He became a global Sage juice ambassador (after being approached by almost a dozen other companies) because he believed in the product. Part of the partnership with Sage would see the brand promote the UK terrestrial

premier of his Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead documentary sequel as part of an integrated campaign around the health benefits of juicing. PR around the first Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead film saw an advertising value equivalent of £398k through 137 media features. The film, which aired in 2013 on Channel 5, had an audience of over 2,000,000 and in the 24 hours following John Lewis sold out of juicers. Yet after Cross’s follow-up film was pulled from the schedules earlier this year MBA’s #JuiceLove campaign would arguably be without its biggest asset

of each video, , creating further (and independent) content that customers will come across in their research phase.

“We need to go to their worlds rather than try to grab them into our world,” says Gubbin.

Adds Munce: “It’s building the brand from the ground up.” The strategy works because the products are great.

Content alone, though, isn’t enough – MBA utilises social media to seed it and cross-populates videos and images across social platforms. It also takes the brand into the real world, again supported by social.

One example is #TalkTeaWithHeston - to launch Sage’s tea maker, MBA devised social stunt #TalkTeaWithHeston – the chef popped out of a tea-vending machine at London’s Westfield shopping centre, followed by a series of video content including interviews with Blumenthal that went viral. Tea maker sales have increased by 21%.

The brand has also engaged with London’s hipster coffee community by staging latte artist events in independent coffee shops – an example of how real world events can spawn social conversations across Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.

It helps that many of the Sage products tap into people’s passions – such as the recent trend for juicing and the growing home demand for barista-style coffee.

Between them, agency and brand have developed a low-cost, high conversation communications strategy that speaks directly to the consumer – echoing precisely the no-nonsense, straight-talking approach they have built together. It’s a vastly different approach to that taken by Breville in other markets, and one which may yet inform the company’s global communications moving forward. “The world that head office lives in is very different to that in the UK and we have had to prove that this is right for us now,” says Gubbin.

This is one recipe for success that looks set to continue. A wise campaign indeed. ■

– that prime terrestrial TV airtime. No matter, #JuiceLove went social: the campaign was hosted on Sage’s website, a microsite and across Cross’s UK platforms; it appeared across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. The idea was simple – to ask juicers to share their juicing success stories. The best ones would win juicers and recipe books for a loved one – juicing fans would become real advocates and inspiration for their friends. Juicer unit sales increased by 11% during the promotion period and even afterwards stayed above the pre-promotion sales level.

Carrie Landeryou From today time will be measured as BW & AW...Before Waffle & After Waffle! Thanks @SageAppliances & @TheHestonTeam