Bella Italia: Driving emotional connections.
Overview.
Bella Italia is a beloved UK brand known for delivering comfort, familiarity and joy to its diners. What started as a single restaurant over 25 years ago is now a collection of over 75 locations nationwide, each one dedicated to the moments that make you truly ‘Feel Bella’ – feel better, feel connected, and feel immersed in the joy of the Italian way of life.
Amid challenging market conditions and a cost-of-living crisis, the brand wanted to establish a deeper emotional connection with its guests and maintain footfall. They needed a creative campaign that would stand out, capture attention, and remind customers of the uplifting experience that is eating at Bella Italia.
Our strategy.
Emotional connection through scale.
To achieve Bella Italia’s ambition, our strategy focused on leveraging the brand’s core qualities of comfort and familiarity, and projecting them in a new way. Rather than standard food photography, our concept centred on quirky, oversized, larger-than-life visuals of beloved menu items.
Levelling up the brand.
Beyond the creative, the strategy was about levelling the restaurant up as a brand. We set out to rebuild and restructure their campaigns, working closely with their team to transition away from relying on more traditional channels. Instead, we focused on moving them towards a longer term, more sustainable and fully tracked digital campaign output.
Implementation and creativity.
A multichannel approach.
The campaign wasn’t just about great ad creative – it was about meeting the right people, in the right places, at the right time. To execute this, we planned a multichannel media rollout. This included digital ads across YouTube, Meta and Google Search, alongside a heavy-hitting out of home (OOH) presence across train stations, metro hubs and shopping centres.
Maximising the creative impact.
Working closely alongside Bella Italia’s creative partners, we took the campaign’s oversized visual assets – featuring dishes like Spaghetti & Meatballs and Pepperoni Pizza placed in real-life settings – and deployed them where they would have the highest impact. By aligning this bold creative with highly targeted media placements, we ensured the artwork actively drove trackable results.
Using data to our advantage.
Our targeting was underpinned by data from the get-go, with historical ads data and demographic report data utilised in the launch stage of our campaigns. By analysing repeat visitors and high-spending customers, we were able to establish exactly who the brand’s key audience segments were. This data was then used to identify which channels and placements were the most valuable for us, and which creative would resonate the most.
The results.
The ‘Feel Bella’ campaign proved that stepping outside the box and tapping into emotional resonance can drive significant results, even in uncertain economic times. Our multichannel approach successfully transformed customer perceptions and drove immediate footfall, resulting in the campaign being shortlisted for a Campaign of the Year award.
- Delivered over 8.8 million YouTube impressions (more than double lifetime forecasts) and 8.5 million OOH impressions.
- Surpassed our initial Google Search booking forecasts by 627%, delivering over 17,000 bookings in just five months.
- Shortlisted for Campaign of the Year at the prestigious Restaurant Marketer & Innovator Awards.
More Google Search bookings than forecast
YouTube impressions in three months
OOH impressions in just two weeks
Ready to see similar results?
If you’re ready to launch a campaign that shapes your brand’s perception and drives sales, let’s talk. Start your growth story with Embryo.
