RED TRACTOR WITH YOU FOR 25 YEARS | Brand strategy & design - Comms

Red Tractor wanted to celebrate turning 25. We saw an opportunity to create a touching TV ad to improve awareness, while paying tribute to a brand that’s been part of family life for a quarter of a century.

THE CHALLENGE

As one of the UK’s leading food assurance schemes, Red Tractor is a name found in fridges and cupboards nationwide. Since 2000, they’ve been a constant companion for families, helping ensure the safer production of all kinds of foods.

But ask people about the brand, and while the majority will recognise the name, they’ll most likely struggle to define exactly who they are and what they do.

Our challenge was to create a platform that could go beyond the nuts and bolts of Red Tractor’s offering to connect with the consumer on a more personal level – all wrapped up in a big birthday bow.

The Concept

For over 7 years, we’d been working with Red Tractor to produce various campaigns centred around the logistics of their offering. From farm to pack, they showed the intricacies of food production standards, homing in on the part Red Tractor plays in the process.

For this ad, we wanted to switch focus. Putting the consumer in the spotlight, we moved away from functionalities to instead look at the relationship between Red Tractor and family life.

Set over 25 years (a tie to the brand’s anniversary), we chose to centre our story around a family growing older, as seen from the heart of their family home: the kitchen. From moving into your first house, to siblings running around at a birthday party, and touching moments between mum and dad over a family Sunday roast – we aimed to capture emotion by showing how Red Tractor products are present at so many milestones.

With a neatly rhyming script that tapped into the heartfelt and amped up the taste appeal, we crafted a narrative that could resonate with families across the country – all while bringing the different proof points of Red Tractor to life.

The Approach

Within our previous Red Tractor ads, we’d gone all in on stop motion – hand-crafting individual models and sets to bring our world to life. However, with our message changing to become more consumer-focused, we felt it was time for a new visual direction too – one that could really dial up the emotion we were tapping into.

To do so, we embraced CGI. With the help of animation house Passion Pictures, we created a style that authentically evolved the brand world to add more dynamism, detail and expression to our characters and narrative.

Stockholm-based directors Against All Odds brought our vision and story to life, with Zelig Sound adding further depth through music and sound design.

The Result

Our output was a 30-second TV advert, which was shown on spots across the UK, as well as a suite of assets to sit across radio, digital OOH, printed in-store comms, and social.

The result was an ad that authentically evolved Red Tractor comms from the functional to the emotive. Together, we celebrated the brand’s milestone birthday with a touching tribute to the role they’ve played in family life for over 25 years.