GREGGS
X NIGELLA
Campaign of the Year (over £50k)
PR Moment Awards 2025
Gold for Partnership
The Drum Awards 2025
If Greggs (the iconic UK bakery) was going to be the official starting gun of Christmas, it needed to be more than the Festive Bake. It needed a moment that felt unexpected, but still unmistakably Greggs: small, warm and a bit cheeky. Nobody serves up the magic of Christmas in the little moments better than Greggs.
So we teamed up with the Christmas queen herself, Nigella Lawson. Someone who doesn't take herself too seriously and knows how to deliver thumb-stopping content, she was key to out-sparkling competitors with a fun, newsworthy and saucy festive brand moment.
Out-voicing competitors on a fraction of the budget.
Nigella Lawson is a well-known celebrity chef, famous for her fancy dishes and saucy personality, and the last person you'd expect to front a Greggs campaign, which made her the perfect choice. For the hero edit, the art direction leant into an angelic, ironically cheesy, premium Christmas vibe, as if Nigella were talking about her luxurious cooking, only to reveal at the end that it's all about good old Greggs. That reveal set up the rest of the ad, which is loaded with playful innuendos and classic Greggs humour, making Nigella's irresistible allure even more tempting.
To work alongside the launch, I designed a visual identity for the Greggs Christmas Menu, blending festive elegance with irony. This was applied to PR boxes shaped like a festive cookbook, sent to influencers and Greggs VIPs. The boxes quickly went viral on social media and even featured in a teaser ad with Nigella herself.
Results
The buzz started before we even launched.
Nigella leaving the Greggs shoot – festive bag in hand – was paparazzi gold.
When the campaign finally dropped, it exploded. Social lit up. Fans swooned. Critics applauded. Coverage rolled in – over 1,520 articles, with more than 70 in nationals.
We featured on Good Morning Britain, Lorraine and countless radio stations.
Social chatter hit 7.3 million.
Engagements topped 400,000.
On just 10–15% of the budget, Greggs out-voiced Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi and John Lewis.
The campaign reached 37 million people – that’s 92% of UK adults – racking up a whopping 4.56 billion opportunities to see. And the nation loved it, with less than 1% negative sentiment.
This magical depiction was directed by duo Si&Ad, with production from Academy Films, and VFX by Selected Works. I worked closely with my creative partner Jess West (Copywriter), as well as the rest of the amazing team at Drummond Central.