Bringing back the Captain: how Birds Eye refreshed its brand with an old asset

Emily Barley

Following changes of ownership and positioning, frozen food brand Birds Eye had seen its sales across drop alarmingly; it needed to do something radically different.

“Seventy-five percent of British households buy our products at least once a year; fifty percent of households buy our products at least once every 12 weeks,” according to Birds Eye marketing director Steve Challouma.

It’s an enviable position for the legacy frozen food brand whose founder, Clarence Frank Birdseye II, invented the modern quick-freezing process for food. And since 1922, the company has continued to innovate in various ways, including in marketing by airing the first colour TV ad in the UK back in 1969.

An ill-fated master brand strategy

Fast forward to 2014 and Birds Eye Europe, also operating...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands