The challenge

Farmhouse Fare produces good old-fashioned puddings: sticky toffee, chocolate, bread and butter, the sort of thing your gran used to make.

The challenge was that while consumers were familiar with the gooey, richness of their recipes they hadn’t heard of Lancashire’s Farmhouse Fare.

The communications for the Daniels Chilled Foods brand centred round the idea that a proper family meal – the epitome of quality time together – deserved a proper pudding. The aim was therefore to build an emotional link between the brand and family time.

The TV solution

The answer was the Farmhouse Fare Family, seen on ITV every Sunday evening for eight consecutive weeks as part of a sponsorship of The Royal.

The tie up was perfect since research showed that the peak Sunday night show’s brand values were identical to those of Farmhouse Fare. It too harked back to a time when the world was a slower, more substantial place.

Its link with Heartbeat – The Royal was originally featured in the show before getting its own programme – also tied up well with the rural roots of the brand.

The show provided shared family viewing in the same way that Farmhouse Fare would provide an emotionally satisfying shared pudding.

The break bumpers provided a glimpse into the lives of the Farmhouse Fare Family, featuring a dad finding room for a bit of sticky toffee pudding or trying to cajole the family out for a post-lunch walk, or a family spoon fight for the last portion of chocolate pudding.

Results

The show successfully took Farmhouse Fare to its core audience, ABC1 Women, reaching 41% of the target group, 4.9m potential consumers and a total audience of 20.6m.

On average families sitting together were exposed to the Farmhouse Fare Family 15 times in just eight weeks.

Awareness of Farmhouse Fare, which had lagged behind rivals such as Sara Lee at just 11%, had risen to 50% after just six weeks of the partnership.

Tesco’s significantly increased its business, adding an extra two lines and effectively doubling Farmhouse Fare’s revenue from this key retailer.

Buyers increased their pre-orders in anticipation of consumer demand, boosting the number of puddings leaving the factory by 45%.

Total business sales were up 41% year on year in 2007, out-performing the chilled deserts market by 171% and increasing Farmhouse Fare’s penetration by 33%.

“Farmhouse Fare is classic example of how content and context can combine and contribute significantly to business success.”

Jez Groom, Edwards Groom Saunders