Every year, UK food brands spend millions trying to own Christmas. They buy prime-time television slots, hire A-list directors, and flood social media with polished content.
Then Greggs spent a fraction of that budget, hired Nigella Lawson, and beat all of them.
That campaign is one of the clearest examples of what the Hope&Glory food campaign model delivers when creative thinking replaces financial brute force.
Hope&Glory, founded in 2011 by Jo Carr and James Gordon-Macintosh, built its reputation on creating outsized cultural moments for consumer and food brands on budgets.
Moreover, the results of this particular Hope&Glory food campaign are not self-reported estimates.
Meltwater, YouGov, and Kantar independently verify them, and they are publicly recognized at The Drum Awards and the PRmoment Awards 2025.
These validations make this case study instructive for any food or consumer brand deciding whether earned PR can compete with paid advertising.
Who Is Hope&Glory? The Agency Behind the Campaign
Hope&Glory is a London-based independent consumer brand and lifestyle agency.
The agency describes itself as helping organizations connect with consumers through the media that most influences them.
Since its founding in 2011, Hope&Glory has grown into one of the UK’s most awarded independent PR agencies.
Campaign UK named it PR Agency of the Year at the 2023 awards, then Independent PR Agency of the Year again at the 2024 awards.
PRovoke Media named it one of the best agencies in the UK in 2025.
Furthermore, the agency’s financial performance backs up those accolades.
Hope&Glory reported fee income of just under £12 million in 2024, with 10% year-on-year income growth and a healthy 19% margin.
Profits increased by 26%, and the December 2024 run-rate sat 20% above the previous year.
Additionally, Hope&Glory now serves as EMEA or global agency of record for Uber, Pepsi International Beverages, Carlsberg, YouTube, Google, and Meta.
However, the Hope&Glory food campaign that most clearly defines the agency’s creative identity is the Greggs x Nigella collaboration.
Before examining results, understanding the Hope&Glory food campaign brief helps explain why the strategy worked.
Key Hope&Glory Facts
- Founded: 2011, London
- Co-founders: Jo Carr, Chief Client Officer; James Gordon-Macintosh, Chief Creative Officer
- 2024 fee income: Just under £12 million
- Awards: Campaign UK PR Agency of the Year (2023), Independent PR Agency of the Year (2024), PRmoment Awards Best Media Campaign 2025
- EMEA/Global clients: Uber, Pepsi, Carlsberg, YouTube, Google, Meta, Samsung, LEGO, Dyson
The Challenge: Owning Christmas on a Fraction of the Budget
Greggs faces the same challenge every November. Its brand awareness sits consistently above 90% across the UK. Consumers love the bakery.
However, during Christmas, Greggs competes for cultural attention with retailers that have blockbuster advertising budgets, including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Aldi, and John Lewis.
Furthermore, Greggs had never produced a Christmas advertisement before.
Consequently, the brief was bold: create Greggs’ very first Christmas ad, launch the 2024 festive menu, and generate a share of voice that could compete with grocery retailers spending ten to fifteen times more.
Research showed that despite ongoing cost-of-living pressures, consumers still wanted to treat themselves, especially in the Christmas build-up. Small indulgent moments mattered enormously.
Accordingly, the Hope&Glory food campaign team asked, who better represents indulgence than Nigella Lawson?
Nigella represents luxurious, aspirational home cooking. Greggs represents affordable, grab-and-go British food.
However, the Hope&Glory food campaign team recognized that the contrast itself was the creative idea.
High-brow meets high street. That tension, rather than smoothing it over, became the campaign’s entire identity.
How the Hope & Glory Food Campaign Strategy Worked
The Hope&Glory food campaign strategy operated in three deliberate phases.
1. Building anticipation before the launch
Hope&Glory seeded the story early, placing strategic information with trusted media contacts before any official announcement.
Consequently, when paparazzi captured Nigella leaving the shoot with a Greggs bag, the speculation ignited two weeks before the campaign officially dropped. Every major tabloid ran the story.
The internet buzzed with theories.
2. A simultaneous, multi-channel launch
Rather than issuing a traditional press release, Hope&Glory premiered the ad on Nigella’s Instagram channel and Greggs’ social accounts.
Pre-sold stories hit the media simultaneously, creating a wall of coverage across every major title.
Each publication found its own angle, from Nigella’s comic delivery to the question of whether Greggs had made the perfect celebrity choice.
3. Sustaining the conversation
The campaign appeared on Good Morning Britain, Lorraine, and countless radio programs.
Social media engagement continued building organically for days after the launch.
Subsequently, every key metric target was either met or exceeded.
Also Read: How Finn Partners Generated $50M Tourism Campaign ROI
The Results: Every Number Independently Verified
The Hope&Glory food campaign for Greggs produced results that withstand independent scrutiny at every level.
Reach and coverage: The campaign reached 37 million people, representing 92% of the UK adult population, generating 4.56 billion opportunities to see, according to Meltwater analysis.
Additionally, the campaign produced over 1,520 pieces of media coverage, including more than 70 articles in national newspapers.
Social media performance: Social conversation generated 7.3 million in reach and over 400,000 engagements. Both figures are independently sourced from Meltwater’s November 2024 analysis.
Share of voice versus competitors: On just 10-15% of the budget that Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Aldi, and John Lewis spent on their respective Christmas campaigns, Greggs achieved a greater share of voice than all of them at launch.
Specifically, Greggs outperformed Sainsbury’s by 24%, Tesco by 34%, Aldi by 36%, and John Lewis by 6%.
Brand impact: YouGov polling conducted on 13 November 2024 confirmed that 70% of the UK population were aware of the campaign.
Furthermore, 74.4% of those who saw it said they were more likely to consider purchasing from Greggs. Buzz scores rose 35% in the launch week.
Kantar ranked the ad in the top 3% of all campaigns assessed for difference, surprise, and stopping power.
Awards: The campaign won Gold for Partnership or Collaboration at The Drum Awards for Marketing and won Best Media Campaign at the PRmoment Awards 2025.
Both are independently judged competitive awards.
Five Lessons From the Hope&Glory Food Campaign
The Hope&Glory food campaign approach offers clear, transferable lessons for any food or consumer brand weighing earned PR against paid advertising.
1. Use the contrast, not despite it. The Nigella-Greggs pairing worked because it was unexpected. Hope&Glory leaned into that tension rather than smoothing it away. Accordingly, the campaign generated genuine curiosity and cultural conversation. Your brand’s unexpected partnership angle is likely hiding in plain sight.
2. Seed early, launch hard. Building anticipation before the campaign dropped dramatically multiplied its impact. The paparazzi moment two weeks before the official launch created earned coverage before a single penny of the campaign budget was spent. Plan your pre-launch narrative as carefully as the launch itself.
3. Let every publication find its own angle. Rather than controlling one narrative rigidly, Hope&Glory gave each outlet enough space to find its own story. Consequently, coverage came simultaneously from fashion writers, food journalists, advertising critics, and tabloid reporters. Diversity of coverage angle extends reach without additional spend.
4. Creative PR competes with paid media. This Hope&Glory food campaign proves that earned media, when executed with genuine creative thinking, can out-voice competitors spending ten times more. The lesson is not that advertising is irrelevant. Most food brands strategically undervalue creative PR.
5. Measure business outcomes, not just impressions. The Hope&Glory food campaign team tracked YouGov purchase intent, Kantar brand effectiveness scores, and share of voice against specific named competitors. That discipline of connecting earned media to verifiable business metrics is what separates this Hope&Glory food campaign from typical PR case studies that count clips.
Conclusion
The Hope&Glory food campaign for Greggs is not a lucky viral moment.
It is the repeatable output of an agency that prioritizes creative thinking over tactical execution, story over tactics, and measurable business outcomes over impression counts.
For food and consumer brands that want to compete above their weight class, the lesson from this Hope&Glory food campaign is straightforward.
Creative earned media, executed with the right agency partner, generates greater cultural impact than paid advertising campaigns at ten times the budget.
Additionally, the Hope&Glory food campaign track record confirms this is a repeatable model, not a one-off result.
Hope&Glory has proven that repeatedly across Greggs, Uber Eats, Sainsbury’s, and its CALM mental health work.
The consistency of that output is what makes the agency worth serious consideration for any UK food or consumer brand with an appetite for real cultural impact.
