Flaming Grill
A summer worth talking about
The challenge: Getting Flaming Grill to own summer
Flaming Grill approached us needing a stand-out summer campaign. It's a pub built for exactly this season: big beer gardens, live sport on the screens, food made for sharing outdoors, but none of that was being told as one story. Guests who know Flaming Grill genuinely love it, with strong loyalty and a real sense of local community built around each pub. The trouble was getting found in the first place: a large chunk of the estate had no distinct external identity, so guests driving past had no clue what the brand stood for.
Without a proper summer campaign to lean on, Flaming Grill was leaving its biggest season of the year to chance. Our challenge was to give it a summer platform strong enough to carry the whole season: distinctive, flexible enough to work across every format the brand needed, and built to make Flaming Grill feel like the obvious choice the moment the sun comes out.
Our approach: Finding the exhale
1. Getting under the skin of the brand
We began by digging into who actually visits Flaming Grill and why.
Guests who already know the brand love it, coming back again and again and treating their local as part of the neighbourhood. However, the real problem wasn't retention; it was acquisition. Too many people were driving straight past without any idea of what was waiting inside. That gap between guest love and guest awareness became our starting point.
2. Owning the moment
Digging further, we kept landing on the same moment: the second someone in the group chat says "oh, go on then."
That's when the plan for a quiet night falls apart, and Flaming Grill becomes the answer. This helped us land on our mission: to own that exhale, the feeling right after someone decides to stop being sensible and go out instead. It's also where the campaign name came from.
3. Creating a platform, not just a campaign
A single hero image and headline wasn't going to cut it.
Summer needed to show up everywhere: on menus, on screens, in social settings, on the tables themselves. So we set about building a proper platform, a full toolkit of assets, colours and mechanics that could flex across every format Flaming Grill needed without ever losing the thread.
The solution: Introducing Go On, It’s Summer
The platform: Go On, It's Summer became Flaming Grill's answer to "what does our summer actually feel like?" The line carries the campaign's energy in headline moments, and flexes down into a simple lock-up that can travel across every format the season demands.
A flexible campaign footer: Built at a consistent angle with the lock-up always on the left and the Flaming Grill logo bottom right, the footer device gives every piece of summer creative a shared, unmistakable home, whatever the format or the message sitting above it.
A content-led colour system: To keep the huge range of formats and moments feeling organised rather than chaotic, we built distinct colourways for campaign, events, food, and sport content, all sitting within the same bold yellow-and-blue campaign identity. Guests can tell at a glance what kind of moment they're looking at, without ever losing the thread of the wider platform.
Animation and stickers: We developed a motion system to bring the static lock-up to life across digital screens and social, with the design building in on itself: guides drawing in, the lock-up zooming into place, and bold promotional stickers unravelling onto the page as though they're being stuck down in real time. That sticker mechanic became the engine for distinct promos (Karaoke Night, Burger Week, 2-for-1 offers) that could rotate constantly without ever needing a new campaign identity built from scratch.
A structure built to flex all summer long: Rather than one big launch moment, we built the platform to dial up and down as the season goes on, moving between big sport occasions, food-led promos and events, and quieter everyday messaging. Alongside this, we split creative into two registers: awareness storytelling to build the world and feeling of the campaign, and sharper activation copy to give guests a clear, immediate reason to book a table tonight.
The results: A platform built to carry Flaming Grill’s summer
A proper summer identity, at last: Go On, It's Summer gives Flaming Grill a single, recognisable identity for the season, something the brand has never had before. Guests now see one continuous story running through every touchpoint, all summer long.
A toolkit that scales easily: From the sticker mechanic to the content-led colour system, every element was built so new promos, events and offers can be turned around fast without losing brand consistency. Karaoke Night, Burger Week and a 2-for-1 offer can all live in the same world, styled distinctly enough to stand out but unmistakably part of one platform.
A visual identity guests will recognise: With the help of production house Teepee and photographer Ceri Davies, a dedicated photoshoot captured real moments rather than generic pub stock. The brand now has an authentic bank of imagery that reflects how guests actually spend their summer, giving every uninvested pub a way to show, not just tell, what Flaming Grill stands for.
Built to outlast the summer: The photography, colour system and lock-up mechanics were all designed with longevity in mind, giving Flaming Grill a foundation it can keep drawing on well beyond this campaign, rather than a one-off that disappears the moment autumn arrives.
"We brought Whippet in to lead the strategic and creative repositioning of Flaming Grill ahead of our Summer campaign. They created a bold, playful and vibrant campaign that captured the brand’s personality and stood out in the market, while providing a strong platform for future guest communications. Their expertise, diligence and collaborative approach truly set them apart. I'd highly recommend Whippet to anyone looking for an exceptional creative partner."
Scott Rowland, Integrated Marketing Manager, Flaming Grill