Is Baileys an example of the new recipe at VMLY&R?

The UK seems to have gone baking mad since Great British Bake Off (is this why we’re all getting so fat?) and Irish liqueur brand Baileys is trying to get in on the act with its first global digital campaign through new agency VMLY&R.

You thought Baileys was a drink but actually it’s also a baking product, there to prevent baking misadventures. The campaign’s called #RecipeUnfudged and it’s just started on Facebook and Instagram.

Laura Pearce, Baileys Europe marketing director Laura Pearce says: “We wanted to showcase the incredible diversity of our product. I hope our new campaign provides genuinely useful suggestions and inspiration to aspiring cooks in their time of need.”

VMLY&R ECD Harsh Kapadia, Executive Creative Director, VMLY&R, said: “When amateur chefs’ recipes fail, data shows that many turn to “Chef Google” for help. We leveraged this insight to make Baileys part of the conversation, offering help when and where people are searching for it.”

Over 36 million baking searches are forecast globally for Q4 2018, it seems, with popular hashtags including #bakingfail, #NailedIt, #ExpectationVsReality recording the highs and lows of baking experiments. Social mentions of baking and treating are growing 90 per cent year on year.

So it all seems to stack up and saves the expense of a big budget TV commercial – if it works.

There’s the rub of course, as we bakers don’t say. Difficult to judge the creative without seeing the results, so we won’t.

As for VMLY&R this sort of campaign, with its undeniable appeal to clients, is presumably a big reason for the ascendancy of digital network VML in the merger with Y&R.

Let’s hope we see some proper, um, ads soon.