When Block Report began working with itsu in Q1 2025, the brand’s YouGov Positive Talkability score sat at just 2.2%, meaning 97.8% of the UK population were not actively talking about them. Alongside this, research revealed that 60% of consumers had never heard of itsu, even when prompted. Despite their best efforts, itsu was simply not part of the cultural conversation: they had some brand awareness, but no cultural salience.
itsu tasked us with a singular, ambitious objective: increase Positive Talkability by generating fame beyond social feeds, taking the brand into real-world conversation, all while working within tight production parameters and non-existent media budgets. The objective for the November Block Report was no different, but the context was slightly more challenging...
In virtually every marketing department in the country, the question will be posed at some point: “What’s our Christmas idea?” Not at itsu. Christmas for them had become somewhat of a damp squib. Sales dip, search interest falls, and culturally, the brand gets crowded out by indulgence and tradition. The usual response would be to fight harder, spend more, shout louder - but in itsu’s case, they’d stopped asking the Christmas question altogether.
But Block Report is about unblocking brands by helping them become more salient, more often. So, Christmas for itsu was just another brand problem to unblock. Albeit a challenging one, given itsu has little or no right to be there.
Our agency is built around a single product: the Block Report. Ten insights and ten ideas spanning brand, category and culture, presented and delivered every month. For itsu, the November Block Report focused on Christmas as a ‘unique’ moment where consumers don’t fully hate advertising, providing a glimmer of hope that itsu could strike it lucky and reap some of the rewards from the public’s fleeting interest in ads.
The competition, however, is fierce. With December the most important trading month for a whole host of brands, the holiday season has become a life-or-death arms race.
With an anthropomorphised carrot jacked on media steroids a prime example of our ‘blank cheque budget’ competition, we knew we’d need to be exponentially more unexpected, given our infinitesimal budget.
Luckily, the raison d'être of Block Report is to help brands earn attention by implementing low-cost ideas that generate disproportionate returns. To help itsu compete with the big media budgets, we used our fame-generating framework: The Triangle of Talkability:
With December officially itsu’s worst trading month, we operated on a noodle-thin budget. The original script required multiple locations, extras and a two-day shoot. When the costs came back, the heavy hand of reality forced us to make adjustments... And call in favours. The production was whittled down to a one-day shoot at just two locations and became reliant on Jack (Block Report founder)’s house, family, fridge and tree to bring it within budget. The final VO was provided FOC by the editor, Jack Stanton, and our producer, Lucy Vince, played the role of jogging extra.
The Raider put in the performance of a lifetime, and in the end, the result was an ad so unexpected that it broke the Christmasphere - proving our long-held belief that banging insights, coupled with creative whiplash and a sprinkling of internet legend, could hit the big time.
Final costs:
Agency fees: £3,815
Production: £10,335
Talent: £2,000
Very British Problems partnership: £1,500
Total: £17,650
Block Report is built on the sole belief that low-cost fame-driving work can yield disproportionate returns for the brands we work with. Every output is evaluated through a robust PCA that looks at:
Reach - How many people are we reaching with our campaign across paid and owned?
In total, we generated 7.7 million organic views. 7.2 million of which were from itsu’s own channels. These results sat 2034% above page average on Instagram and 2553% above page average on TikTok. The equivalent media value was estimated to be £323,481*
Resonance - Is the communication landing and driving high levels of engagement and conversation?
The ad was the third most engaged with post itsu had ever created, which led to a raft of reaction videos from cultural commentators, and ‘LinkedInfluencers’ lauding the work, proclaiming that itsu had ‘won Christmas’.
Reaction - Is the communication shifting to longer-term metrics that measure real-world impact?
Itsu had the best December in terms of search ever recorded. Critically, the top related search terms contributing towards the increase in volume were “The Wealdstone Raider” and “itsu Christmas Advert”, demonstrating not just a correlation, but a causation in increasing brand search. Talkability is our measurement north star – we’re obsessed with it - and the Anti Christmas; Christmas Ad delivered a 21% uplift in Talkability compared to the previous year. Q4 2025 also saw the brand witness the highest-ever level of ad awareness achieved. Again going some way to show that it was advertising that was driving this increase in talkability around the brand.
For itsu, this was the best-performing festive sales period ever. Not a bad return for 0.447% of the cost of a Supermarket Christmas ad.*
*Source Waitrose Christmas ad 2025
