The brief

MuscleFood had built a strong following as a supplier of fitness-focused food. Levi Roots had spent fifteen years turning his Dragons’ Den moment into a genuine food brand. When the two came together to launch a range of healthy Caribbean ready meals, the collaboration had natural story appeal — but natural story appeal and actual media coverage are two different things.

The brief was to create a buzz around the launch that would reach both MuscleFood’s fitness audience and the much broader audience of consumers who follow Levi’s career. Critically, it had to bridge those two worlds without alienating either — healthy food fans who might not follow celebrity culture, and celebrity press readers who might not care about macros.

The approach

Celebrity collaborations are easy to get wrong. Too much focus on the celebrity and the product gets lost. Too much focus on the product and the celebrity angle goes to waste. We built a strategy that used Levi as the story entry point — his journey, his personality, the surprise of the fitness-food crossover — but always brought the conversation back to the range itself.

Press launch events, taste tests and one-to-one interviews with Levi gave journalists genuine access rather than a branded press release. We pitched the collaboration as a cultural moment — the Reggae Reggae Sauce icon bringing Caribbean cooking into the fitness world — and targeted both entertainment and food press simultaneously.

In parallel, we developed a trade PR angle around the strategic significance of the collaboration. For MuscleFood, partnering with a celebrity chef of Levi’s profile represented a genuine shift in brand positioning — moving beyond fitness supplement territory into mainstream lifestyle food. That story played well in food industry and trade titles.

The result

141 items of national coverage in three weeks. Entertainment titles, food press, national news websites, lifestyle publications. The kind of breadth that comes from having a genuinely interesting story and the PR craft to tell it to the right people in the right way. The range launched with momentum — which is exactly what a product launch campaign should deliver.