How we stopped at nothing to deliver a great payback for Laithwaites

IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Study 2024

This case describes a strategy to help the wine selling family business, Laithwaites, invest confidently in brand building by running rigorous regional tests to demonstrate how commercially beneficial brand advertising could be for the company. Using creative based on the proposition, ‘We stop at nothing to bring you great wine’, phases of advertising aired in test regions on ITV’s linear TV and BVOD platforms, radio, and social. In test areas, the company performed better than in control regions where ads didn’t run. The regional tests delivered an estimated £1.63 of revenue per £1 invested, enabling profits to be modelled from national and longer-term campaigns.

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Client Statement

James Morrison, Head of Brand & Partnerships, Laithwaites Wine (Direct Wines Ltd)

Through our ‘We Stop at Nothing’ campaign, we have been (and are still on) a journey of transformation that has influenced our approach to marketing, established a much greater recognition of the role of brand in driving business growth, and acted as a catalyst for wider business change.

Particularly in a family-owned, 50+ year old business with such a rich history of incredible people and stories, introducing a “new” brand idea is a real challenge – not such much in regards to what you focus on, but more, what you don’t…

It was therefore super-important that we didn’t get ahead of ourselves. Pace and focus were critical, both in terms of the level of media impact as well as the approach to the creative. We approached the work patiently - as if it were a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity – always thinking about how it would evolve over the next 10 years, just as much as the next 10 days or months.

By involving both the wider business and our agency partners throughout, we were able to create an approach that had all the key ingredients: a strong actionable insight from target segments, a creative idea and media plan that elicited all the right responses (including a branded Laithwaites wine crate), and a measurement framework to show the incremental impact in a language the whole business could understand.

Overall we’ve been delighted with the results so far – strong up-lifts across the board is a great start, and we are now focussing on where next for the Laithwaites brand – building on the rigour in measurement and insight we’ve seen to date.