We took a humble Brussells Sprout – the nation’s most polarising vegetable – and created a dare-devil ‘Lead Stunt Sprout’ to become the core of our campaign.

Voiced by comedy actor Peter Serafinowicz, ‘Russell Sprout’ was launched in a ‘behind the scenes interview’ to coincide with the launch of the brand TV spot.

We created a several-week-long Story System spanning social media channels and a bespoke digital hub to engage the nation.

First with Russell’s interview and follow-up series of ‘movie stunt masterclass’ films.

Then we invited Britain to get involved.

Initially, by creating their own humorous ‘fruit & veg’ inspired actor names and film titles.

Ultimately, by re-creating famous movie scene films and stills, using sprouts and other vegetables as the stars, in the worlds first ‘Golden Sprout Awards.

After the first 3 weeks of the campaign and once people had got to know ‘Russ’, we asked our fans to get involved and create their own content – whether in the form of vegetable movie title puns….. The implementation of the campaign ran in two phases.

The first was designed to achieve Reach & Awareness of Sky’s Christmas TVC, which was successfully achieved through a Facebook Reachblock & Promoted Twitter Trend.

The second phase was designed to deepen the level of engagement with consumers who engaged with the first phase. Those who engaged were retargeted with our Russ Sprout on Facebook, and through custom audience targeting on Twitter.

Within the second phase, we aimed to drive engagement with the Russ Sprout video content (x1 90sec and x3 15sec videos) creating a story-driven narrative around Russ.

This transitioned into inviting our audience to participate on a deeper level, through posts designed to drive conversation and participation, before introducing a UGC competition where we asked fans to create their own #SproutMovies for a chance to win a great prize – just in time for Christmas.

Overall reach 29.3 million

Organic reach 9.5 million

36% uplift in positive brand sentiment

Top performing organic posts:

Facebook peak engagement rate

79%

Twitter peak engagement rate

37%