The return of the Captain: How reinventing an icon grew Birds Eye Fish Fingers

Birds Eye, a frozen food brand, returned to growth in the UK by reimagining its iconic Captain figure for today’s consumers to increase brand relevance and salience.

Campaign details

Brand: Birds EyeAdvertiser: Nomad FoodsEntrants: Zenith and Grey LondonPrincipal authors: Richard Kirk, Zenith; Daniel Sherrard, GreyContributing authors: Richard Clay, Zenith; Matthew Gladstone, Grey; Steve Challouma, Nomad Foods

Summary

Birds Eye Fish Fingers were facing stagnant sales, declining penetration and falling quality perceptions. Their new strategy discarded their previous masterbrand model in favour of a new creative and media approach that brought attention to Fish Fingers. The new campaign revived and reinvented Captain Birds Eye after 10 years of his being out of the public eye. The campaign drove salience...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands