As someone who doesn’t work in marketing, I’ve never spent a significant amount of time dwelling on the concepts of “brand identity”, “collabs” or “shared vision”. But if I’d had to wager who might be an appropriate spokesperson for no-frills Greggs – famed for its beloved beige buffet of greasy sausage rolls and steak bakes – I’m not sure Nigella Lawson would have immediately sprung to mind. Yet these two seemingly opposing forces have come together in the most public display of affection possible: the former is the star of the latter’s first-ever Christmas advert.
They have, traditionally, represented very different sides of British culinary life. Writer and presenter Nigella, with her 1950s pin-up aesthetic, decadent recipes involving quantities of double cream that would haunt a cardiologist’s nightmares, and plummy tones befitting a BBC radio play, is the epitome of middle-class dining. She’s always popping into her enviable walk-in pantry to fetch some little-known ingredient; she’s always inviting chums round to her exquisite west London home to indulge in a perfectly thrown-together feasting platter. Not to mention her properly upper-crust heritage (she’s the daughter of the heiress to the J Lyons and Co fortune and a baron/former chancellor of the Exchequer).
