How Yorkshire Tea partnered with Metro to promote its sponsorship of the Tour de France and find London's ultimate cyclist.

1. Goodstuff
Yorkshire Tea – King of the Mornings
Best topical campaign
Executive summary
Taylors of Harrogate wanted to celebrate the Tour de France’s Grand Depart taking
place in Yorkshire. Starting with a topical print scamp Yorkshire Tea were looking to add
a unique spin to the event (and distribute some dry samples along the way).
We took the idea to the next stage, creating a four day ‘King of the Mornings’
competition and challenging London’s commuters to prove they are the ultimate cyclist.
300 people jumped on a bike. Online engagement levels smashed FMCG norms and
100k samples were distributed over three days. Magnifique!
Campaign images
Experiential
KotM
activity
&
Sampling

2. ½
Page
&
24x4
Press
Ad

3. Background and objectives
As an official sponsor of the Tour de France, Yorkshire Tea were planning a small,
tactical print ad and sampling campaign to celebrate the ‘Grand Depart’ taking place in
their home county. The creative agency BMB had developed a neat print scamp called
the ‘King of the Mornings’ (KotM) - a nod to the competition’s gruelling hill-climb stage,
King of the Mountains.
In the scamp, the red spots on the iconic King of the Mountains jersey were replaced
with red, Yorkshire Tea teapots. The wearer holds his arms aloft, looking like he’s
celebrating a stage win - when he’s actually stretching out a huge yawn.
At Goodstuff, when presented with or having a creative idea, we always ask ourselves
how far we can push it. We also happen to love cycling, so got a little excited by the
scamp.
We saw an opportunity to bring a topical print ad to life and deliver a rich association
with the ‘Grand Depart’ in a wittier and more memorable way. Naturally we also wanted
to be able to get our own hands on the KotM jersey too.
Insight
Sharing
a
cycling
spread
with
our
sister
coffee
brand
Taylors!

4. Our insight was simple and two-fold:
Road cycling stars such as Bradley Wiggins have become household names in the UK,
and when we looked into what our heartland tea audience knew about cycling it
confirmed our suspicions. Yorkshire Tea drinkers over indexed versus the average ‘tea
drinker’ for both taking part in and watching cycling.
Additionally whilst we knew we could appeal to our core buying audience through the
display campaign we also felt there were some truths about cyclists we could tap into to
bring the KotM idea to life: 1) Avid cyclists are fiercely competitive, using data apps like
Strava to fuel and focus their competitiveness 2) Like no other sport, cyclists obsess
about kit - from the bikes to the clothing.
The plan
With our two audiences in mind, we devised a sampling campaign with a difference. One
that pulled cycling fanatics in, challenged them, and then rewarded them – rather than
just handing out dry samples. Working with Metro we created a competition where
cyclists coming through London train stations could discover who was ‘King of the
Mornings’. To do this we invited them to jump on a ‘Watt bike’ to see how far they could
cycle in two minutes.
The 10 cyclists that cycled furthest received the prized and very rare KotM jersey.
Participants and spectators also received a limited edition pack of French inspired
Yorkshire Thé. Cyclists could demonstrate how good they were - and win a money can’t
buy jersey. Magnifique.
To deliver the idea we partnered with king of the morning papers, Metro and experiential
specialist Motion. This allowed us to showcase BMB’s print creative, distribute 100,000
sample packs across key cities and run the challenge in London stations. Across the
Grand Depart the challenge ran in Paddington, Liverpool St and Victoria.
Alongside the 24 x 4 creative we placed half page and 10 x 7 advertorials informing
readers of Yorkshire Tea’s association with the Grand Depart and about which train
stations they could collect a sample from or take part in the time challenge at. Online we
took over the Metro website as well celebrating those who had taken part online. King of
the Morning specially created double MPU’s also ran around all cycling content on
Metro.co.uk.
In addition to the challenge we ran a national print campaign across the Grand Depart
weekend in top indexing titles. This enabled us to reach a further 4 million ABC1 adults.
Titles included The Times, Telegraph and Independent who all featured cycling specials
across the weekend which was the perfect context for our creative. Where possible, we
placed our KotM ads on the same spreads as sister brand Taylors Coffee who were also
celebrating an association with cycling with a dedicated print campaign. Across other
titles we aimed for first 25% to help guarantee reaching our broader main shopper
audience.

5. The results
We could provide some meaningless ‘results’ about it being the most talked about
campaign of the year on Yorkshire Tea’s popular social channels, or campaign
engagement rates being 16% versus average 1-3% FMCG norms. But the truth is, it was
a topical fast turnaround campaign with only social measures in place.
Besides, cyclists know the only results that really count are these:
Distance over 2 minutes -
London Commuters: 1st
P.McDougall (1.662km) 2nd
A.Louet (1.639km)
3rd
T.Stephenson (1.637km)
Goodstuffers: 1st
S.Fowler (1.436km) 2nd
S.Drake (1.434km) 3rd
S.Wilden (1.411km)
Client view
“A great example of how Goodstuff can bring life to what may seemingly start life as a
simple press execution. National cover, national sampling and all delivered from idea to
action within weeks. Although secretly we think they only did it for the polka-dot tea pot
jerseys”