Q&A: Just Eat’s head of brand marketing explains how politics inspires the brand’s image

Just Eat’s head of brand marketing Richard Murfitt explains how a political way of thinking has influenced the brand’s image.

richard murfitt

Marketing Week (MW): How has Just Eat taken inspiration from politics in its marketing?

Richard Murfitt (RM): The idea of being inspired by politics is interesting because it means you’re focusing on a particular issue or idea rather than trying to be something for everybody. That’s where the notion of being the anti-cooking rebels came from.

We are a fun, maverick brand with our tongue firmly in our cheek so we’ll look to do more guerilla-type activity and PR as a way of bringing the brand to life. We’ve also launched a rebellion against cooking at home so we’re considering all the resulting political connotations. There’s a tradition of brands that attach themselves to elections, for example the likes of Betfair and Marmite have done that before. So that could be another way for people to show their support and affinity to the rebellion that we’re leading.

MW: What kind of behaviour are you campaigning for?

RM: We feel that for too long the occasional takeaway meal has been demonised.

Spending hours in a hot kitchen after a long day at work has been championed as the way forward, particularly with the whole cultural trend of celebrity chefs and home cooking. So in our recent TV advert, we’re saying we’ve had enough of that and we’re telling the people of Britain: “Don’t cook. Just eat”.

We’re trying to change the way people look at takeaway food.

MW: What reaction have you had to the new brand message?

RM: Challenger brands don’t go out there to please everybody – they go out there to create a debate and we wanted to do that by bursting the whole celebrity chef cultural bubble. It’s early days because we only launched the TV ad in September but from an orders point of view the reaction has been strong. On a brand front, we’re also pleased with the early signs of how people are reacting to the message. We passed 700,000 Facebook fans recently.

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