Creative Corner: Rashford x Beano, Greggs x Primark, Sue Ryder's #GriefKind and memories of 1966

Hi gang, it’s time for another Creative Corner but…

*Plot twist*

It’s the last Creative Corner until September as we all take a very well-deserved break to relax and enjoy ourselves. I will be in Italy finally on my very belated honeymoon. Make no mistake though, we’re going into that break on a high with this week’s campaigns!

Before we get into it though, I want to give a little shout out to everyone who joined us last night for the second Radioactive Summer PRty at SAMA Bankside in London. It was a truly wonderful night and I loved finally meeting people I’ve long admired online in real life for a night of agenda-free, let’s celebrate how great we all are, fun. I believe some tickets are still available for next week’s Summer PRty at The Pen and Pencil in Manchester so do join us if you can. For a mere £5 (100% of which will go to not-for-profit PR school Socially Mobile) you get a free bar, free pizza, and games with prizes. Not too shabby!

Plugging over - let’s get to it!

Greggs x Primark

What a world we live in where merch exists to buy, with actual money, plastered in the Greggs logo and people are clamouring to get it!

Launched this week by Kelis no less - who, in the words of someone much funnier than me*, suggested she change the lyrics to Milkshake to ‘My steak bake brings all the boys to the yard’ for the occasion - the collection includes a varsity jacket, swimsuit, and croc-like sandals in the iconic blue and yellow of the brand.

What I love about this is the FUN both brands, powered by Greggs, are having with their brands. Brand awareness with the right amount of silliness makes it the collab we didn’t know we wanted, and the collab we now know we needed.

*If it was you please speak up for a credit because I can’t find the tweet!

Marcus Rashford, Editor

Another great campaign from the folks at Taylor Herring and Beano this week with a special edition guest edited by football legend and all-round great guy Marcus Rashford. The issue encourages children to find their own voices and talks about how asking for help isn’t a weakness.

An added bonus is the charity element, with 20p of every copy sold going to the Marcus Rashford Book Club.

Taylor Herring has done some cracking stuff with the Beano brand over the last year - some of which we’ve featured here - and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

Sue Ryder #GriefKind

Final nod this week the the #GriefKind campaign from Sue Ryder, which I’ve been meaning to mention here for weeks because there’s been some really nice activations around it since it launched last August - my favourite so far being the Grief Kind cards you can order for a donation to help support people at different stages of grief.

This week the charity launched its first ad for the campaign, narrated beautifully by Richard E Grant, who sadly lost his wife earlier this year. It’s a truly lovely ad that highlights that there’s no right way to grieve, just that you shouldn’t have to do it alone.

It’s an important message here in the UK where we don’t talk about death and those left behind as often, or as well, as other cultures, and it really hit home for me when I lost my mother-in-law earlier this year.

Congrats to the whole Sue Ryder team for producing such a lovely campaign around a difficult topic.

Making memories

Special mention to everlastingmemory.org which teamed up with ‘66 footballing uber legend Sir Geoff Hurst this week, preserving his memories of the 1966 World Cup as NFTs. Now I don’t love the concept of NFTS but I do love a creative way to land PR coverage and this is exactly that.

Hats off to Lewis Davey and the Ideas Farm team, and Above+Beyond for their work on this!

Creative Moment Awards 2022 shortlist is out now!

It’s shortlist day and huge congrats to all the finalists.

It was a genuine pleasure and privilege to be a small part of the process this year across the three categories I judged, and fantastic to see so many creative campaigns entered that have featured in this very column.

Awards night is Thursday 29th September, a mere two months away, so we won’t keep you waiting too long to find out who the winners are. Tickets can be booked here and I hope to see you there!

And that’s all folks!

We’ll of course be keeping an eye out for any creative goodness silly season has to offer and will include the best in our first round-up back, so if you are launching a campaign or you spot something between now and then please do still send it our way ready for September.

Until then, ciao bellas!