Yorkshire Tea Cherry Bakeover

Client: Yorkshire Tea

With black tea in decline, Yorkshire Tea launched its Speciality Brew range to attract younger audiences and reinvigorate the tea break. However, in a crowded category, the range held just 5.8% share, and a new flavour, Cherry Bakewell, needed more than a conventional FMCG launch. The challenge was to drive awareness, trial, and cultural relevance by making people truly feel the flavour, with experiential leading rather than supporting the campaign.

The central insight was that Cherry Bakewell is inseparable from Bakewell itself – a Derbyshire town outside Yorkshire Tea’s home county. Staying true to its confident, challenger personality, the brand boldly claimed Bakewell as the spiritual home of its Cherry Bakewell brew. This became The Bakewell Takeover: a provocative, place-based experiential invasion designed to earn attention, participation and, crucially, Bakewell’s approval in real time. Bakewell was taken over with ad vans, branded bikes, sampling teams and local shop activations, turning the town into a live stage. Appearances from baker and TV personality Liam Charles further rooted the activation in food culture. The result was an ownable experiential platform that transformed a flavour launch into a nationally resonant, commercially impactful event.