Strongbow - Building the credentials of the UK’s number one cider
Cider was witnessing an revolution in innovation, new brands were launching, from big names to smaller batch brands, all flooding the market with new flavours and interesting stories of provenance. Yet Strongbow, the category leader by volume was being negatively perceived. Consumers assumed that the crisp sharp taste derived from chemicals and artificial processes, whereas the truth was quite the opposite. It is the Herefordshire apples which make up the infamous Strongbow taste; apples grown to be naturally sharp and crisp.
Our brief was to educate the consumer on the brand’s credentials, explaining where the taste comes from, focusing on the Herefordshire provenance and highlighting the effort that goes into growing the 1 billion cider apples each year, and fundamentally the quality of the product. The creative solution was a split screen devise communicating the bittersweet process undertaken by Strongbow each year.
Given all the myths circulating around the product, we felt it was important to communicate with total transparency. So many other brands were communicating idilic production lines and fantasy settings that simply were not true, so we decided to peel back the curtain and shoot this campaign in a genuine Strongbow orchard and factory.
Our brief was to educate the consumer on the brand’s credentials, explaining where the taste comes from, focusing on the Herefordshire provenance and highlighting the effort that goes into growing the 1 billion cider apples each year, and fundamentally the quality of the product. The creative solution was a split screen devise communicating the bittersweet process undertaken by Strongbow each year.
Given all the myths circulating around the product, we felt it was important to communicate with total transparency. So many other brands were communicating idilic production lines and fantasy settings that simply were not true, so we decided to peel back the curtain and shoot this campaign in a genuine Strongbow orchard and factory.
The campaign built consumers trust when it came to brand quality and credentials. It made existing consumers feel good about their choice at the bar and showed that consumers new to the brand were now more open to Strongbow.
In addition to the Bittersweet campaign, we also developed work with Heineken to deliver what was then the UK’s biggest alcohol launch of the year, ‘Cloudy Apple’, along with the launch of flavoured ciders to help compete with the wider category trends.
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Agency: St Luke’s Communications
Director: Steve Cope
Production Company: Rattling Stick