ā³ 5 minute read.
Most people love tucking into a bit of Greggs, from its jammy doughnuts to its steaming hot pasties. Bakes and cakes aside, the brand is also well-known for its funny, down to earth and quick-witted tone of voice on social media.
Ever since they ‘won the internet’ back in 2019 with its vegan sausage rolls launch (below) in the style of an iPhone launch, they have gone from strength to strength in keeping their audiences captivated with offbeat and out of the ordinary content.
It wasn’t just this vegan sausage roll campaign that put Greggs on the map – their content perfectly captures the cheeky tone of voice of its target demographic, perfectly illustrated in their latest stream of tweets.
Iāve picked out three key ingredients that are consistent throughout its social media streams and contributes to its success.
- Sharp tone of voice
- Quick response times
- Involvement of users in its fun and engaging content
A master class in public relations
Let’s go back to 2019 when Greggs launched the vegan sausage roll. The marketing campaign has been referred to as “a master class in public relations” by the industry magazine PR Week because of how it handled the backlash from Piers Morgan (it let conversations on social media do the talking instead of in your face promotional content). The product itself was launched off the back of a Peta petition urging the chain to alter its menu to accommodate vegans. Piers Morgan, who had beef with the very notion of a vegan option tweeted: āNobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns,” to his 6.5m followers.
Greggs’ official Twitter account responded: āOh hello Piers, we’ve been expecting you.ā 20,000 retweets and 144,000 likes followed with lots of exposure – users were able to dabble in the for and against conversations about the vegan roll whilst Greggs just sat back and watched the show.
Greggsā social media presence generates continuous levels of engagement with its humorous and decidedly British tone of voice.
One of its social media managers said:
āWe have our own personality and way in which we speak as a brand that comes naturally to us talking to customers every day. Itās used in all communications, not just on social. The work we do on social feeds directly from our wider brand strategy, so we talk the same way at every customer touch point.ā
Greggsā tongue-in-cheek marketing highlights the importance of a consistent tone of voice across all of its communication channels – they don’t treat social media as just an add-on to its marketing.
Look how well the below tweet did, a simple question got just over 1,000 responses ā and you can see that they have replied back to almost all of the responses which shows that they take customer engagement very seriously.
Again, they clearly know how to tickle taste-buds whilst keeping to a topic that most people would have related to:
In a nutshell:
Greggs has mastered the art of building a loyal following with its quirky content, engagement with fans and just simply having fun on social media – not taking themselves seriously. Their instantly recognisable humorous tone of voice reels in retweets and replies which in turn, increases exposure and works wonders for brand loyalty.
@DigitalVinGill 