Brace’s are Welsh legends and Wales’ largest independent bakery, leading the baked goods market across the country. If you’ve been to the shops in Wales, you’ll know their range of historic breads, Welsh cakes, crumpets, scones and much more very well.
Based in Blackwood, South Wales, this bakery powerhouse runs on traditional family values and over 120 years of experience dating back to 1902. Delivering quality, diversity and choice in their ranges, Brace’s prioritise the customer’s experience and seamlessly fit into the day-to-day lives of many Welsh families.
With new products launching regularly to meet their customers' needs, Brace’s continues to diversify. Including the launch of their latest Ernest 100% Sourdough line, a homage to Ernest Brace and products which follow the traditional sourdough recipe.
Brace’s approached InSynch ahead of the launch of their Ernest 100% Sourdough range in Sainsbury’s stores across the UK. With the launch of UK-wide coverage, they were seeking a digital partner who could support with a successful retailer launch and get customers into stores and buying. The strategy needed to:
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It’s been an absolute pleasure working with InSynch over the past few months. As part of the marketing team at Brace’s, we’re constantly managing a wide range of activity from product promotions and new launches to events, supermarket campaigns, and ongoing packaging design.
With the national launch of our Ernest Sourdough brand, we recognised the need to bring in expert support to strengthen our online presence. InSynch delivered exactly that. They optimised the Ernest website, set up and managed Google Ads, ran targeted social media. campaigns, and produced high-quality content across our channels. Since then, Ernest Sourdough has really taken off. We’re now in the process of announcing additional store listings and new product launches, and InSynch has played a key role in that growth. Their work has significantly enhanced our online presence and helped us reach a much wider audience. Thanks Insynch!
Through an extensive social media strategy delivering regular, relevant and optimised organic content that resonates with Ernest’s target audience across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn, we harnessed the power of community to drive brand growth.
Ernest’s social media channels were delivered regular video and lifestyle content, which was shot, edited, optimised and delivered from our in-house content creation team.
A close relationship with Ernest’s team was essential to ensure that brand messaging, values and visions were aligned.
With this content creation and social media management, we supported the team at Brace’s to achieve:
● 874% increase in Instagram and Facebook views
● 588% increase in reach within targeted locations on Instagram
● 1.5k% increase in content interactions on Meta channels
● Over 20k organic views on YouTube Shorts
● Over 26k organic views on TikTok
● 84.6% increase in organic views in For You page placements on TikTok
Alongside the organic content creation strategy, the Brace’s team enlisted us to run geo-targeted store awareness campaigns across Meta, with placements on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Paid advertising focused on stockist stores and target customers within a commutable distance to the store. Delivering content which felt organic and inspired potential customers to pick up a loaf on their next shop and see what they could create with Ernest.
After 3 months, brand recall lift resulted in over 10,000 customers likely to remember the brand when shopping in store, and over 75,000 target customers were reached.
To develop multi-channel awareness, Google Advertising was implemented within the strategy to drive awareness of the new launch to YouTube users and Google searchers.
A geo-targeted approach was adopted on Google, targeting ideal customers within commutable distances to local Sainsbury’s stockists.
This resulted in over half a million impressions within these geotargeted locations and over 7k conversions.
To further develop the Ernest 100% Sourdough’s organic awareness across channels, detailed Search Engine Optimisation and Generative AI Optimisation were undertaken to build website authority and organic traffic to the website.
AI optimisation strengthened Ernest’s likelihood of recommendation in AI models when users asked where to buy sourdough, which is the best sourdough to buy in the UK and other related brand and category questions. Ensuring Ernest was always at the forefront of the user's mind when primed to buy.
Through hard work and commitment to delivering a quality product from the Brace’s team, paired with a targeted digital and social media strategy from InSynch, Ernest 100% Sourdough continues to grow as a brand, launching in more Sainsbury’s stores nationwide and becoming a firm favourite for many bread lovers across the UK. To find out more about Brace’s Bakery and Ernest Sourdough, explore their website and social media channels linked below.
Grab your favourite Brace’s loaf in supermarkets across Wales and Ernest 100% Sourdough in Sainsbury’s across the UK.
