Up in the clouds at The Shard at London Bridge, you’ll find The Kitchen London, embedded within Kraft Heinz’s London outpost. Here, stunts and activations are concocted, which have a proven track record of resonating with consumers and driving engagement.
At The Drum Awards 2023, The Kitchen cleaned up. Within the Social Media Awards it won Disruptive or Innovative Idea or Stunt and Real Time Response or Activation, as well as scooping the Grand Prix prize for ‘Fridge v Cupboard’ (see video below). Within the Digital Industries Awards, it won in Food and Drink, Social Media and the special Chair Award. Overall, this is a staggering achievement that made us want to know how it did it. And, lo and behold, it just won two more gongs at The Drum Awards 2024.
Winning has to do with having a tacit understanding of the brand that The Kitchen was set up to work for. As The Kitchen head of agency Alex Wade puts it: “We connect our brands with our audience through the lens of culture.”
He talks about “creating acts, not ads, that truly move people, culture and ultimately our business.” These acts – as we’ll get into – drive high levels of engagement with Heinz products through stunts, which engage fans of the brand online and in the real world in irreverent ways. This alone gives The Kitchen London “a well-defined lane” within the roster of agencies that work with Kraft Heinz, Wade adds.
In terms of where it sits alongside other agencies, Wade says it doesn’t go up against them for work. “We often work in unison.”
The genesis of The Kitchen’s work isn’t usually from the handing out of briefs or pitching against other rostered agencies. Rather, it generates a lot of its own work by being proactive and lending an ear to brand managers to “get to know their priorities inside and out,” Wade says. This understanding is then coupled with The Kitchen team’s cultural nous and understanding of trends in the wider world. From this point, ideas start to percolate.
Read more at: The Drum
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