Sixty years old. National news.

The brief

Hancocks is the UK’s biggest confectionery wholesaler — a business that supplies sweets and snacks to over 70,000 trade customers from 14 depots spanning Glasgow to Bristol. In 2022, they turned 60. They also had a problem: post-pandemic footfall to their depots had dropped significantly, with many customers having shifted to online ordering during lockdown and not returned to store.

The challenge was both a communications one and a commercial one. How do you drive trade customers back into a wholesaler they’d stopped visiting? And how do you tell the story of a 60-year-old business in a way that earns genuine media attention?

The approach

The 60th anniversary gave us a strong news hook, but the real work was in how we used it. For trade press, we developed individual campaigns for each of the 14 depot events. For regional press and broadcast, we positioned each depot as the largest sweetshop in their town or city.

Hancocks had preserved their history. We used original photography, store opening records, archive press clippings and decades of institutional memory to give each regional story its own depth and personality. This wasn’t a generic anniversary press release — it was a local story with a national business behind it.

The result

The campaign opened at the Loughborough depot — the original Hancocks store — where the combination of history and anniversary resulted in ITV Central coverage. That template was then replicated across each depot throughout the year.

By the end of the anniversary year, footfall had increased by 17% across the estate. The PR campaign hadn’t just told a story — it had measurably moved customers.