Premium pudding brand Gü is hoping Lucky Generals can double its sales – here’s how

The dessert-maker has been around since 2003 and has thus far been able to differentiate itself from rivals as a purveyor of weeknight indulgence, set apart by modern packaging, a premium price point and classy, recyclable packaging in the form of nifty glass ramekins.

After a couple of years of strong business growth – no doubt boosted by British consumers indulging their sweet tooth amid pandemic-inspired ’treat brain’ – the company was acquired by Exponent, a private equity firm, in May 2021.

To realize that ambitious strategy, it’s shaking up its agency partners. It ended its relationship with previous agency St Luke’s in favor of new appointee Lucky Generals.

Anthony Wells, chief marketing officer at Gü, tells The Drum: ”The new brief moved from UK to multi-market and with a new growth strategy for the brand. This meant we wanted to get a few agencies taking a fresh look.

”We are on a transformation mission at Gü to bring more layers of pleasure to consumers across the world. We need an agency [that] can deliver exciting creative ideas and effective commercial results and I was impressed by Lucky Generals from day one – [it] demonstrated a deep understanding of our brand mission, an aptitude for category disruption and an openness in working together as true partners.”

Why pick Lucky Generals?

According to Lucky Generals’ founding partner Helen Calcraft, the agency was awarded the work based on its engagement with this ambition to disrupt.

”We are a creative company for people on a mission – and Gü certainly [is] on a mission,” she says. ”We worked in collaboration with the client and key stakeholders within the business from the outset, making sure we understood [its] brand challenge and built close relationships.

”We then built a big, bold platform idea – one that can relaunch Gü impactfully both within and outside of the business and across markets.”

Wells said he picked the agency based on its sample brand platform’s capacity to translate beyond the UK. ”[Lucky Generals] translated clear strategic insight into a big idea and demonstrated how that would work in execution in an established market like the UK and also in how the idea would work in new markets.”

Can an established name also be a category disruptor?

Despite the fact that Gü has occupied refrigerated shelves for almost 20 years at this point, Wells is adamant the company can still ”disrupt” the desserts category.

”We believe so – in the UK, new consumer occasions are forming how people treat themselves, and the chilled dessert category isn’t playing in some of these. In addition, the opportunity for Gü to transform the category in under-developed markets with a truly premium adult indulgent treat is enormous. This will be achieved through a combination of distinctive brand communications and more first-to-market innovation – something Gü has been brilliant at since the launch in 2003.”

He says that advertising, and particularly strong creative, is at the center of its plan to scale up sales and market share.

”Advertising is critical to our future growth – we have grown 27% in the last two years and the role of new creative is twofold; to sustain and accelerate that growth.

”Firstly, to make the brand famous again in the UK, we need to build our distinctiveness [and] grow top-of-mind awareness and relevance given the new consumer habits on treating themselves in a post-pandemic world that is also able to command premium pricing. Secondly, we need to launch the brand in new markets and build a distinctive and competitive position.”

Gü’s plans are ambitious, but if Lucky Generals can help bring its sugary global domination about, the agency should be able to stick with the client for as long as one of its dinky ramekins in the back of a kitchen cupboard.