Are you Christmas-ready yet? As signs creep into shop windows, email newsletters slip into your inbox and wreaths are spotted on doors around the country, the pre-Christmas angst is setting in. And, with 53% of people doing their Christmas shopping in October and November according to Statista, Christmas has officially begun.

To mark the start of the Christmas season, Greggs hosted a nationwide campaign to bring their infamous Festive Bake to one UK city earlier than the rest of the country. Fans were given the chance to vote on a unique website to prove that their city deserved the bake ahead of the nationwide release date of 7^th November. This coincides with the launch of the Greggs Christmas menu in all 2,000 stores around the country.

After a week of voting in 20 best-selling UK towns and cities, Newcastle won with other cities including Birmingham, Cardiff, London and Manchester as runners up. The bake will be released in Newcastle on 1^st November with it travelling to each city on following days leading up to the nationwide launch. Video, social content and website were created by Splendid while PR and Media was handled by Red Havas.

Greggs also ran a search for Super Fans to carry the Festive-Bake torch Olympic-style into their city’s store to signify the start of Christmas. These Super Fans will be the first to try the bake as well as being rewarded with a £100 Greggs gift card.

Greggs celebrates its 80^th anniversary this year and so what better way to see out the year than with a Christmas competition that galvanises tens of thousands of their consumers nationwide. They recognise the power that Christmas coming early can have as this campaign not only drums up excitement around the Festive Bake as a product but also raises awareness of their Christmas offering as a whole. And for the six million customers the stores serve every week, the idea of an early launch, an exclusive peek, matters.