Work
Henderson Group 60th year of Spar in NI
Throughout 2021, we have been supporting Henderson Group with comms and content to celebrate SPAR NI serving local communities for 60 years.
We kicked off the year rounding up several local faces to wish SPAR a very happy 60th birthday, lead by none other than Olivia Nash, AKA Ma from Give My Head Peace, who’s famous “Fred! We’ve no bread!” line in the 80’s SPAR TV ad made her famous… and still gets quoted to her to this day!
Other familiar faces included Olivia and Ma’s counterpart, Tim McGarry AKA, Da, plus the lovely Pamela Ballantine, Julian Simmons and Carl Frampton MBE.
Gathering 60 years of success and streamlining it into succinct comms was the name of the game, and kicking off our media relations, we took trade and business press on a trip down memory lane, writing features from John Agnew, Chairman of Henderson Group whose father, William, brought SPAR to Northern Ireland.
The brand pledged to raise £60,000 for their charity partner, Marie Curie, during their 60th year so we got to work to support with creative PR, not only for the brand as a whole but for individual retailers across Northern Ireland who would be joining the celebratory fun around Marie Curie’s flagship fundraising event – the Blooming Great Tea Parties. Quickly rebranded as Birthday Parties, we brought in Olivia Nash to help launch this special year of the fundraising events. Olivia also attended SPAR Sunnyside Street in Belfast to help cut the cake and meet the local shoppers who were there to support on the day.
We got Olivia back in front of the camera, and our content team shot and produced a social media short to support SPAR NI’s consumer facing competition which went live across all stores, celebrating the 60th.
The cherry on top of the cake during the birthday month was the opening of the 300th SPAR in Northern Ireland, which was covered extensively across NI business press, trade outlets, broadcast and online.
Happy Birthday SPAR NI, and here’s to many more!
