Sweet Success at Grocer Awards - Macphie

The UK’s leading family-owned food ingredients manufacturer, Macphie has won the “Best Consumer PR Campaign” award at the prestigious Grocer Marketing, Advertising and PR awards, which took place at  a glittering ceremony in London’s Savoy Hotel. The awards, organised by The Grocer magazine, aim to honour the retail and FMCG’s most exciting and innovative creative campaigns of the past 12 months.

The family-owned company received the award for its first retail brand, DeviliShh posh puds. Building on eighty years of supplying restaurants, hotels and bakeries around the world, Macphie unveiled its DeviliShh range to the public at the Taste of Grampian food festival. The range comprises a crème brûlée, panna cotta, crème caramel and pot au chocolat, two sweet sauces and four fruit coulis – everything consumers need to prepare restaurant-quality desserts at home, without following complicated recipes and spending hours in the kitchen.

The company has used innovative marketing techniques to promote its new brand. Macphie employed BBC Junior Apprentice star, Kirsty Cleaver, to help launch the desserts. The company tapped into social media such as Facebook and Twitter. They have also organised pudding parties across Scotland. DeviliShh puds can now be found in over 300 fine food retailers nationwide including Waitrose, Lakeland and Dobbies Foodhalls.

Commercial Communications Manager, Karen Scott, who developed the attention-grabbing PR campaign, said: “The Grocer awards are the pinnacle of achievement for the retail sector. DeviliShh desserts are highly innovative and required a fresh, new marketing approach. Winning this award for our first retail brand is a tribute to the hard work and effort we’ve put in. We were pitted against some multi-million pound established brands and we’re thrilled that our campaign has been recognised as the best of the best. Every other brand had used an agency to do their PR, where we had done all the work in-house, which makes it even more special.”

Adam Leyland, Editor of The Grocer said: “The Grocer Marketing, Advertising and PR Awards are the only awards in the industry where judges base their decisions not only on creativity but business results. The winners are a testimony to resilience, in the face of budgetary pressures, like never before to be genuinely fast moving. Congratulations to all the winners.”