For the first time in almost 1,000 years, the Bayeux Tapestry is heading to UK shores.
We felt that there was only one cultural artefact with the scale, significance and flaky resonance to newsjack the moment: the Greggs Sausage Roll, naturally.
Which is how we found ourselves celebrating National Sausage Roll Day by creating the Greggs Ta-Pastry: an eight-metre-long embroidered masterpiece charting the conquest of Britain by the nation’s favourite bake.
Working with the brilliant team at royal embroiderers Hawthorne & Heaney, we took inspiration from the legendary 11th-century original and gave it a distinctly Greggs twist.
We didn’t need kings, archers and cavalry. Rather we marked John Gregg’s bicycle rounds through Newcastle, the rise of the high street icon, the Great Vegan Schism and the many twists, turns and golden moments that have helped make Greggs a central part of the fabric of British life.
The finished piece was ridiculous in all the right ways.
By the end of the process, we’d created a medieval-style artwork made with more than 5.5 million stitches, 13 symbolic thread colours, 3,679 trims and over 200 hours of careful work. Truly a masterpiece.
Naturally, we gave it a suitably grand unveiling at the Design Museum, where fans could see it for free across National Sausage Roll Day weekend.
The media got well and truly wrapped up in it. There have been well over 250 pieces of coverage across national and regional media, alongside hundreds of posts across social channels as creators got involved to create guided tours of the artwork across their feeds.
Most importantly, it did exactly what a Greggs campaign should do: turned a brilliantly daft observation into a cultural moment giving the nation something to smile about.
History, they say, is written by the winners. This time, we embroidered it.
