Havas Media UK - More Human. Lasting Impact.

EDF

Disrupting the category by building energy saving into Coronation Street

In a price-sensitive energy market where EDF was outspent by competitors, we needed to drive interest and uptake to support cheaper, more sustainable energy use. When EDF launched Sunday Saver, offering customers up to 16 hours of free electricity on Sundays in exchange for shifting usage away from peak weekdays, we knew that traditional advertising alone wouldn't disrupt established household routines so we had to think outside the box. This wasn't just an awareness task—it was a behaviour change challenge.

Energy decisions are shaped by routine rather than deliberation. To change behaviour, the message had to live inside a trusted domestic story. ITV’s Coronation Street— one of the few media environments where everyday life is continuously portrayed with household routines and choices as part of the narrative. It offered not just reach, but a behaviour-shaping environment.

So, we built EDF into the Coronation Street ecosystem. The partnership included in-show narrative integration, a branded "House of the Future" on the cobbles, environmental cues (EDF van, bus shelter, EV charging point), bespoke cultural content, and cross-platform storytelling across ITV, YouTube, and social channels.

The campaign delivered exceptional impact: 78% partnership recall, +9.5% trust increase, and EDF rising from 5th to 2nd in category consideration. Over 360,000 customers signed up to Sunday Saver, delivering 6.2 million free electricity hours, £1.5m in household savings, and reducing 1,457 tonnes of CO₂e.

Ocado

Turning Media into Ocado’s Storefront

As an online-only supermarket with no physical stores and just 4% share of voice, Ocado competes against high street giants that significantly outspend it. In retail, physical presence builds mental availability—shoppers repeatedly see, pass, and enter stores. Without this everyday visibility, Ocado lacked the familiarity that fuels routine choice. Too often, the brand was dismissed as "not for people like me," suppressing consideration and limiting trial before it could begin.

If Ocado couldn't compete through physical availability, media had to replicate it. Rather than chasing reach alone, the strategy mirrored how supermarkets win in the real world: visible in everyday life, present in planning moments, helpful in stressful situations, and seamless at checkout.

We turned media into Ocado's storefront, bringing the store to where the public already were. By latching onto existing shopping behaviours, we created habitual presence. We extended into familiar cultural spaces to borrow trust, and unified brand and performance as one system—carrying the same promise from storytelling through to conversion.

The campaign delivered strong commercial impact: +6% increase in awareness, +20% increase in brand ROI year-on-year, and +12% customer base growth credited directly to marketing—proving media can successfully replace a physical retail presence.

BBC

Doctor Who

With viewing figures having dropped nearly 40% since the show’s peak in 2008. Our goal was to make Doctor Who the most unmissable TV moment of the festive period.

The growth of Sci-Fi as a genre coffered us a huge but fragmented audience opportunity. However, as a collective this audience had the ability to create an impact bigger than the sum of their parts, driving the social proof we needed to get new audiences to reconsider watching.

This is a story of mass orchestration, rallying multiple audiences through over 40 partners, creating 1000s of touchpoints for our audiences to interact with across a tightly phased plan.

The campaign was so successful, it was not only the most successful piece of Christmas content with 8m viewers. It reversed nearly 16 years of decline viewing figures, providing a 42% uplift in viewing on previous series.

It also re-wrote media engagement benchmarks for the BBC, whilst delivering a 4% increase in Buzz for the franchise.

Starbucks

Winning the Hearts and Minds of Gen Z

This is the story of how Starbucks adapted to once in a generation market conditions and consumer behaviour change, exploiting the full breadth of innovative audio solutions to deliver record breaking business growth and return to pre-pandemic revenue levels.

In 2022, Havas Media identified a new growth strategy for the Starbucks brand, rooted in a pivot towards an emerging audience and created a bold, meaningfully daring media strategy entrenched in the power of audio. A first of its kind approach for Starbucks, utilising linear to digital, podcasts content to playlist sponsorship, real-time data to help deliver dynamic messages to consumers at times of higher propensity to purchase, and even a new audio mnemonic.

Starbucks used audio like never before, pushing the boundaries of the possible to deliver 27 record sales weeks across equity stores, +36% more transactions than FY21 and increased revenue despite lower footfall levels versus pre-pandemic.

Domino's

Pizza Yodelling

Domino’s has long been the UK’s favourite pizza brand, but were negatively impacted by Covid and an increasingly competitive landscape. Negatively impacted by Covid and fierce new entrants, Domino’s needed to increase orders, app downloads and market share. With VCCP’s memorable yodel (Domino-hoo-hoo) as a metaphor for getting the gang back together – a nod to the app’s group-ordering functionality – we successfully positioned Domino’s as owning the post-lockdown reunion moment. Media 1+ reach with TV, OOH, Radio and Digital, adding impact and memorability with 5” yodel “blipverts”, 3D yodelling OOH special builds, murals, a mobile skin that reacted to a user’s yodel (UK media first), twitch partnerships and linking up with key cultural moments, resulted in: 67% increase in app downloads, over 50k and active users increased by 42% a month.