How snack brand Peperami took over a couple's wedding

How far would you go for a snack brand you love? One U.K. couple agreed to theme their entire wedding around their favorite: U.K. pork jerky snack Peperami.

Peperami, a former Unilever brand which is now owned by U.S. company Jack's Link, featured in the couple's dress, cake and decorations. The bride walked down the aisle in a glowing green gown in a nod to the brand's bright green packaging, and an image of its mascot, the Peperami Animal, adorned the train.

The Animal, which is basically a sausage stick with a slightly maniacal smiling face, comes from the days when the brand's former tagline was "It's a Bit of an Animal." The character also popped up during the wedding vows in giant costumed form, while the 300 guests ate dishes based on Peperami products. The bride's "bouquet toss" involved a giant catapult shooting out a cluster of Peperami products.

The campaign was the work of creative agency Forever Beta and comms agency Spider. According to Paulo Areas, chief creative officer at Forever Beta, the idea behind the campaign started with the tagline "We all go a bit Peperami sometimes," after the agency won the Peperami brief in 2021. Rather than running a TV campaign, the agency decided to "disrupt something traditionally British" and quickly settled on the idea of a wedding.

It sent out a casting call online for couples willing to take part in a Peperami-themed wedding, and received "dozens and dozens" of applicants, said Areas, more than 25 on the first day alone. "It was so much easier than I thought it was going to be," he said. The offer was that Peperami would pay for the wedding but it had to be on the brand's terms.

The agency watched over 100 videos sent in by couples before settling on a shortlist of 10 and interviewing those candidates. The winning couple, Leeds-based Luke Hindmarch and Francesca Brooke-Fenton, were selected because of their "spontaneity and authenticity," he said—as well as the fact that they loved Peperami. 

The couple agreed to "pretty much everything" suggested by the brand,  Areas added. The only refusal was that the groom didn't want to wear a green suit, because he worried that "he would look like the Joker."

The wedding was teased ahead of time with social videos (below) showing the reactions of various suppliers when they were asked to make the Peperami wedding cake, dress and bouquet. The wedding itself received coverage in national newspapers including  "The Sun," and is set to be the first in a series of disruptive activations by the brand. In the meantime, Areas said it was "the most fun" he's ever had working on a campaign. "It was like planning a wedding, but with a brand."