Anchor named 'Brand of the Year' at the Grocer Awards 2018

We're delighted that our "Real Life Dairy for Real Family Life" work featuring The Hugglers for Anchor has resulted in the brand being named Brand of the Year at the Grocer Awards 2018. 

You can read more about the award below, or read the full article here

In the hard-fought butters and spreads market, where differentiation is tough to create, Arla Foods has achieved the “reinvention and reconnection of a great brand” our judges agreed. 

Anchor’s success was founded on “creating engagement with customers via brand story” allowing it to take a leading role in the current resurgence of block butter sales and riding its first sales uplift in years. 

It marks quite the turn of fortunes compared with 2016, when Anchor’s value sales declined ahead of the category. The brand’s ‘Everyday Richness’ positioning wasn’t working. It failed to communicate its central theme of rich taste, while overlooking the emerging trend of British provenance. 

The answer was ‘Real Life Dairy for Real Family Life’, a message that “communicated provenance and targeted one of the core needs of consumers: local, sustainable, quality food”. 

New-look Anchor packaging hit chillers in July 2017, bearing bolder colours, a revised logo, and a Union flag to emphasise the brand’s championing of British dairy. Backed by a £4.5m spend, it emphasised the brand’s simplicity and featured the return of the Huggables characters.

“Reinvigorating a category and a heritage brand with modern relevance” led to significant commercial success, our judges said. Anchor surpassed its £100m turnover target by £7m, growing its market share from 8% to 10%. 

The 132-year-old brand’s butters and spreads ended 2017 in strong growth in both value and volume, having had “the courage to take this heritage brand back to its roots and make it famous again”, said our judges.