Office catering marketplace, City Pantry, drove down their CPL using uniquely positioned, insight-driven content.

“GWI gave us the insight we needed to solidify our stance as thought leaders in the food space.”

With tens of thousands of weekly orders across more than 600 businesses, City Pantry is the popular choice for office catering; whether that’s team lunches, client meetings or feasts for the whole company.  

As a brand, their mission is to make working lives better with their food service. 

And with the working world being turned on its head in 2020, the team saw an opportunity to lead the conversation on employee wellbeing and attract the kind of business they wanted.

As Marketing Director, it was Shane Mansfield’s job to make sure the campaign reached the right people, sent the right message, and achieved the best results.

The challenge 

Positioning themselves as thought leaders.

Behaviors and attitudes towards food at work differ from person to person. Factor in a seismic shift in regular working patterns and it’s nearly impossible to craft a message that speaks to everyone.

“Just talking about office food is too narrow,” explains Shane, “and the truth is, business owners rarely see food as a priority.

We wanted to expand our lead voice and explore the link between employee happiness and the perks they receive, showing how these are critical to company health.”

Pivoting their message in this way would help them show the value of food through the medium of employee wellbeing; a hot topic for employers since the outbreak of COVID-19.

The second part of the challenge was sourcing the insights needed to truly cement City Pantry’s position as a thought leader. 

In the past, Shane says their market research conducted with clients had led them into an echo chamber where they were hearing the same views from the same audiences. 

They weren’t getting what they needed.

This time, they wanted a reliable data source that revealed the answers businesses were looking for now. Specifically, one that uncovered the deeper emotions and perceptions of the working professional.

The action

Using custom research to drive the right leads.

Working with GWI to carry out a custom survey on a select audience in the UK, they set out to better understand welfare in the workplace among those with desk jobs.

They wanted to uncover the key emotional drivers behind employee wellbeing by asking questions around stress, mental health, employer support, and attitudes towards work.

Here’s a snippet of the questions they asked, and the results they got back: 

“To make the study even more relevant to our customer base, we tweaked some of the questions to reveal how pre and post-lockdown behaviors differed.”

• Before lockdown, how often would you socialize with colleagues? 
• Did socialization help stress, or did it produce stress?

The team presented their findings in a gated report. Taking an ABM approach, they promoted it through hyper-targeted campaigns tailored to specific businesses they wanted to onboard. 

The result

Driving high-quality leads at a much lower cost.

When it comes to performance of the campaign, the results speak for themselves.

Cost per lead figures were 75% less than other campaigns of a similar type.

But it was also a turning point for the brand. Using insights to help them reposition their core messaging, and pivot during the crisis, they were able to craft a compelling story that continues to attract the right kind of attention.

“GWI provided us with the strength, volume and variety of data points we needed to gather compelling results, with the flexibility to ask additional questions as the landscape developed in front of us.”

Ultimately, City Pantry were able to drive low cost, high-quality leads with smart positioning and inspiring content.

Source: GWI Custom Research Q2 2020