Three years of transformational social
For the last three years, I’ve been creative lead and creative director of the Costa Coffee social accounts.
My goal was to change it from matching luggage and simple product posts to channel agnostic, culture first digital campaigns, that appeal to a new gen-z audience, without losing the boomers and the core audience of Uk Coffee huns.
It worked pretty well! With audience growth across all channels at 60%, overall engagement up 300%, the average of millions of views per post/campaign.
Suddenly it became the account everyone wanted a piece on. We even managed to retain the business after it went to pitch, fending it off from the big networks, and growing the account to have more remit across experiential , PR, CRM and ATL.
Watch the case study below for some of the stats, and catch some campaign highlights below that show the social can be a lot more when you pour some extra love into it.
Costa-misation
We found that the kids were dying their crisp white Nikes in coffee, then posting the results to social media.
Once we got over the sacrilege, we thought to ourselves, what could Costa do with this trend?
Introducing the Drip 1 - a handmade Italian sneaker from the indie brand Artisan Lab, dipped in Costa’s very own Mocha Italia blend and used grounds from the stores.
Hand-dyed by yours truly, we made 50 pairs to give away to sneaker heads and coffee fans.
Billboards, made a little better
Costa’s audience on social love to post about their catch-ups, whether its with their grandkids, their besties or their dogs. So we created a social campaign where we turned peoples posts into billboards (50 in total), and featured them across the UK.
Summer side hustle
The cozzie-livs was hitting hard in 2023. So we created a summer campaign where we let Gen-Z make our ads for us, and get paid to do it. We worked with six influencers across different genres to spread the word and set an example - all you had to do was grab a drink, get creative, and upload it to TikTok to win £1000 and get your ad boosted to millions.
50 ways to leave your latte
Every Autumn, it’s pumpkin spice everything. Not at Costa. We created an integrated campaign with 50+ illustrations, videos and posts that encouraged the UK to break up with Pumpkin Spice latte, and start a new relationship with Costa’s Maple Hazel range.
We even created a Google Chrome Plugin that would replace every mention of pumpkin spice with our content.
Hot Milkshakes
A brand new product. With a shockingly unappetising name.
We turned this into a positive with an integrated campaign, where we have the public the opportunity to rename the product while it was still available.
We created a series of ‘VO-s gone wrong’ with Task Master champion and comedian John Robins, and let the public come up with and vote for the next name.
As expected, ‘MilkshakeMcMilkshakeFace’ won by a landslide.
Festive fun
Each year we led the charge with some fresh influencer focused campaigns, aimed at tickling nostalgia for Costa’s festive range.
The first video was featured in Kantar’s 2022 ‘How to make viral Christmas Content’ round-up, and the second video, making a Costa store entirely out of gingerbread, got over 20 million views across TikTok and Instagram.
Flipping the script for Summer
With Costa’s new range of Summer drinks, we wanted everyone to get in the mindset of their dream summer.
The ‘Vox-pop’ trend was in full force, but we wanted to add an extra special touch. Working with a range of illustrators, we created a series of surreal ‘creature comforts, but on acid’ style illustrations, and then asked the viewers to describe their own dream summer, creating bespoke videos and sending them the art-work to frame in their homes.
What will it Costa?
A fun little twist on the cost-of-living crisis, we sent an influencer out and about to reward the biggest Costa fan we could find with the prize of a lifetime.
Frappélists
What if every drink came with its own summer soundtrack?
We used Costa’s huge presence to shine a spotlight on five up-and-coiming UK artists, who each made a bespoke Spotify playlist for the drinks.
We then filmed music videos with these artists, and made the drinks fully scannable in-store and at music festicals around the UK, so you could sip and sing along instantly.
Let’s get phygital (I’m so sorry)
A little experiment project I ran for Costa to test the limits of fan interaction on TikTok. For a few weeks, we posted clues on TikTok showing that we had hidden a giftcard ready to be claimed if you could find it.
It was an instant success, with some being claimed within half an hour of posting - I’m desperate to trial it out on a bigger scale.
Endless Autumn
A nice little looping animation we made to celebrate Autumn that racked up over 10 million views across our platforms, I assume because most people watched it on a loop.