McCaskie Butchers

THE BRIEF

Our initial brief from McCaskie Butchers was to create a campaign to highlight their haggis in advance of Burns Night 2018. McCaskie’s produce Scotland’s Most Awarded Haggis and were keen to increase brand awareness and highlight their accolade.

THE STRATEGY
We wanted to get people talking about McCaskie haggis in the run up to Burns Night. As producers of Scotland’s most awarded haggis, having won six out of eight annual national haggis competitions, McCaskie Butchers are best placed to be the ones to call for greater recognition of Scotland’s national dish.

Having been developed in Japan, emojis have been in international use since 2011, hitting the mainstream in 2015 when the Oxford English Dictionary named an emoji one of its ‘words’ of the year. Since then, many have claimed that the ‘language of the emoji’ is the most universal language there is.

With other national food favourites such as pizza, sushi, pretzels and croissants already able to show off their own emoji, we felt that Scotland’s national dish should be able to do the same thing.

We therefore launched a campaign the week before Burns Night, across traditional media and social media, calling for a haggis emoji! This campaign was accompanied by an official application to the Unicode Consortium who decide which new emojis will be accepted.

THE RESULTS
The campaign for a haggis emoji spread far and wide, reaching over a million people across all channels.

TV
Lorraine Kelly mentioned the campaign on her morning programme on ITV!

Reporting Scotland – Nigel was on the news!

Saturday Kitchen – connected to Burns Night and haggis rather than the emoji campaign specifically, Nigel appeared with Phill Jupitus!

RADIO
BBC Radio Scotland Kaye Adams programme

LOCAL, REGIONAL, NATIONAL AND SPECIALIST PRESS
The Scotsman
The Herald
Farmers Guardian

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL LIFESTYLE MAGAZINES
Scottish Field

SOCIAL MEDIA
Across Facebook and Instagram, social media reach for the campaign hit over half a million people

Sadly, our official application for an emoji was rejected on the basis that the consortium believe haggis to be a ‘regional’ dish. We disagree, but regardless of the official decision, our campaign achieved its goal of making McCaskie Butchers, and their delicious haggis, well known across Scotland.

Following the success of the campaign, Scene & Herd has been appointed by McCaskie long-term to run their wider PR and, among other things, work with them on the launch of their new e-commerce website.

AWARDS
Part of our wider PR work also involved assisting with the McCaskie entry into the renowned Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards 2019 and, despite there being 320 entries, McCaskie took home one of only 20 trophies, winning the Scotch Product of the Year category with their Unsmoked Back Bacon. Have you tried it yet?!