Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
Not my words of course, but those of JK Rowling. Why am I quoting her you ask? Well, imagination goes a bloody long way if you work in, say, marketing.
Take a look at Greggs, for example, the bakery who once replaced baby Jesus with a sausage roll.
This year, they’re back in the news but for a less controversial reason.
Have a gander at this:
That’s right baby, this Greggs branch has reversed its sign to read ‘SGGERG’ so it appears in its normal form in the Fenwick’s Christmas window layout.
So people looking at some quant Xmas decorations might then see the logo and think ‘tell ya what, give me one of them pastry bois! Yeehaw!’
Pictures showed people gathering in the dozens to the look at the display on Northumberland Street in Newcastle. The adjoining Burger King, clearly, has no such appetite for banter..
I bet this pleases Luke Parker aka the man who spends £5,000 every year on Greggs.
The professional photographer has had two bacon rolls, two sausage rolls and two lattes every single day for years. If he doesn’t get his fix of baked goods, his mood will drop exponentially.
However, after piling a stone and a half on, Parker cut his visits from twice a day to once.
He said, as per the Metro:
It’s a bit of an addiction to be honest. I couldn’t survive without it. If I have ever had to go without, I’ve been in a really bad mood all day.
Although I used to eat there twice a day, now that I’m travelling around I go to a different one nearer home [once] each morning.
Since they opened a Greggs in Kirkham, as soon as I pull up the staff recognise me and start getting my order ready. They remember me.
I have been late for work a few times too because I’ve had to wait in the car whilst they cooked me a sausage fresh. Now they’ve opened a drive-thru in Manchester, I’ll probably go there in a few weeks when I’m working over there. I hope they open one in Kirkham soon.
Greggs was founded as a family bakery business on Tyneside in the 1930s by John Gregg, the father of the present Chairman. When his father died suddenly in 1964, Ian Gregg gave up his plans for a legal career to take over the business, which at that stage consisted of a single shop with a small bakery at the rear.
Today there are around 1,650 Greggs in Britain, nearly double the number of Starbucks or McDonald’s, reports Statista. Perhaps surprisingly, Greggs is only bested by coffee shop Costa, which has over 1,800 branches, and sandwich shop Subway, which opened its 2,000th in February 2015.
Keep doing you, Greggs. Or SGGERG.
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