How Pilgrim’s Built a Culture of Creative Effectiveness Through Iterative Testing and Agency Collaboration
Over the past few years, Pilgrim’s Europe has undergone a fundamental shift, moving from a campaign-led approach to building a scalable, insight-driven system designed to improve creative effectiveness and accelerate business growth. Alongside creative agency Joint, Pilgrim’s set out to transform its communications to deliver consistent long-term brand equity and short-term commercial performance at scale.
A key challenge underpinning this transformation was the need for a more objective, earlier-stage way to evaluate creative. Without this, it was difficult to consistently develop and refine high-performing work from the outset, limiting both efficiency and impact. Addressing this became central to unlocking a more repeatable and effective creative model.
Across its portfolio, including brands such as Richmond and Fridge Raiders, the ambition was to create a more holistic and scalable approach, grounded in customer insight, full-funnel integration, and distinctive Masterbrand platforms.
In 2023, Pilgrim’s partnered with System1 to introduce a more agile and predictive approach to creative testing. Operating in a highly competitive and emotionally driven category, embedding consumer-first insight throughout the creative process became a deliberate and disciplined strategy to ensure consistent emotional cut-through and build distinctive brand platforms. Pre-testing quickly became standard practice, with all campaigns requiring robust consumer validation before going live.
With the support of Joint and a highly collaborative agency ecosystem focused on delivering the best possible work, Pilgrim’s evolved its use of System1’s Test Your Ad Pro. Rather than using it purely as a diagnostic tool for finished assets, it is now embedded as an iterative development partner. Creative is tested early and refined continuously, shifting the mindset from pass or fail to ongoing optimisation. This approach enables teams to understand not just how creative performs, but why, while leveraging System1’s expert consultancy to shape and strengthen ideas throughout the process.
Delivering this shift required more than a change in process. It demanded a cultural transformation. Pilgrim’s has built a culture of creative effectiveness grounded in curiosity, objectivity, and continuous improvement. Teams are encouraged to interrogate results, learn from testing, and collaborate closely with agency partners to refine work at every stage, ensuring effectiveness is built in from the start rather than evaluated at the end.
“Creative effectiveness is no longer an endpoint for us, it’s built into how we operate. By creating a scalable, repeatable system, we’re consistently delivering stronger creative, building better brands, and driving sustained growth, with marketing now firmly established as a core engine of value across the business,” said Chris Doe, UK Marketing & Innovation Director at Pilgrim’s Europe.
This strategic shift has delivered consistently stronger and more sustained results for Pilgrim’s, both in brand metrics and commercial performance. Improvements in creative effectiveness, as measured through System1’s key metrics including long-term growth potential (Star Rating), short-term impact (Spike Rating), and brand recall (Fluency Rating), have translated into tangible business outcomes.
These gains have contributed to improved ROI, record levels of Brand Consideration, and a stronger contribution of paid media to overall volume. This is reflected in 65% revenue growth for UK brands versus 2019, demonstrating the commercial impact of embedding early testing and continuous creative optimisation into the process.
Across Outdoor and Video, performance has steadily strengthened, with the most recent outdoor campaign achieving strong and exceptional results across all measures among its target audience.
Crucially, Pilgrim’s now sees creative effectiveness as a core lever of business performance. Even strong results are interrogated, ensuring a continued focus on learning, optimisation, and building even stronger brands across the portfolio.
"Creative effectiveness is no longer an endpoint for us, it’s built into how we operate. By creating a scalable, repeatable system, we’re consistently delivering stronger creative, building better brands, and driving sustained growth, with marketing now firmly established as a core engine of value across the business."
Chris Doe UK Marketing & Innovation Director at Pilgrim’s Europe
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