Case Study
Bakers &
Larners
How a 255-year-old heritage brand found its voice in the first wave of AI-driven advertising
The Brief
Bakers & Larners is a 255-year-old, family-run department store and cornerstone of Norfolk retail, renowned across East Anglia for its luxury Christmas hampers.
With the UK corporate gifting market worth £78.4 million and more than £20 billion spent during the festive season, the brand wanted to extend its regional reputation into a national conversation. Harton Works was commissioned to deliver a high-impact paid-media campaign across Meta and Google PPC, designed to balance visibility, precision timing, and profit.
Client
Sector
Retail Luxury Gifting
Services
Paid Media
Early Predictive Optimisation
Region
UK (East Anglia / National)
Christmas is the most volatile period in UK retail search. “Luxury hampers” queries surge more than six-fold between mid-November and December, driving up CPCs and crowding smaller retailers out of the auction.
Bakers & Larners needed to:
1. Protect margins while sustaining reach.
2. Maintain a heritage-led brand tone in a discount-driven market.
3. Compete for attention during a year when automation and algorithmic optimisation were rewriting how ads were served.
The Strategy
1. Data-Led Timing Insight
Using five years of GA and Meta data, we modelled demand curves and identified a 23-day conversion window (20 Nov – 12 Dec). Ad intensity and spend were concentrated inside that window — where intent, not impressions, peaked.
2. Intelligent Campaign Structuring
Search campaigns were rebuilt around entity clarity — coupling brand, product, and location (“Bakers & Larners luxury hampers Norfolk / UK”) to maximise relevance within Google’s automated ranking and bidding systems.
3. Creative Narrative
We fused craftsmanship and occasion: “Two Hundred Years of Christmas Craft.” Creative assets showcased the Holt store, product detail, and heritage cues that reinforced brand authenticity over price competition.
4. Collaborative Execution
Partnering with the in-house social team, we aligned Meta and Google audiences to maintain a single story across channels so every touchpoint reinforced the same emotional and contextual signal.
5. Early Predictive Optimisation
At a time when tools like Performance Max, Meta Advantage+, and emerging conversational interfaces such as ChatGPT (beta) and You.com were beginning to influence discovery, we focused on consistent brand and product entities. That structure ensured Bakers & Larners content remained visible across both traditional search results and the first wave of AI-driven recommendation systems.
The Sweet Taste of Success
"We’ve always trusted craftsmanship. This time, it was data and algorithms doing the crafting and Harton Works showed us how to shape them." — Jane Gurney-Read, Managing Director, The CT Baker Group
Results
→ +883% ROAS on Google PPC
→ +916% ROAS on Meta Paid Social
→ 1,500% year-on-year improvement in total ROAS
→ £9 generated for every £1 spent
→ Increased branded search and visibility during the key three-week peak period
Why It Worked?
This campaign landed at a pivotal moment — when AI-assisted ad systems were beginning to reshape how visibility, intent, and relevance interacted.
By focusing on structure, timing, and contextual clarity rather than volume, Bakers & Larners stayed ahead of that curve.
What we now call Retrieval-First™ was taking shape in real time: building campaigns not around what people type, but how systems interpret and prioritise meaning.
It was an early signal of how heritage brands could thrive in an algorithmic world — by teaching data who they are.
Early Retrieval-First™ Insight
The campaigns caught the first wave of AI-driven advertising, when algorithms began interpreting meaning as much as matching keywords.
By aligning story, structure, and signal, Bakers & Larners didn’t just adapt to that change; they anticipated it.
It was Retrieval-First™ thinking before the name existed.
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