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To bring this launch to life, Lee Kum Kee partnered with Together to create a campaign that went beyond traditional advertising. One that blended insight-led creativity, immersive storytelling, and real-world experience.
We spoke with Ben Turnbull, Account Director at Together, to understand how the campaign came together, from shaping the core idea to transforming noodles into a full-scale experiential moment at Outernet London.
I’m an Account Director at Together Agency, where I oversee client relationships, help shape strategic direction, and work closely with teams to ensure projects deliver against key objectives and performance metrics.
My involvement with Lee Kum Kee started right from the pitch stage. They were a new client for us, and we won the business in June last year. From there, I worked closely with our creative teams to shape the campaign idea, define the scale of the activation, and oversee production planning, timelines, budgets, and stakeholder alignment.
I also acted as the main point of contact between the client and our internal teams across creative, production, and media. At Together, we like to embed ourselves deeply within our clients’ teams, and that approach was especially important for this project.
Lee Kum Kee is a global sauce brand with an incredibly strong heritage, particularly around oyster sauce. The biggest challenge was stretching that existing perception and moving the brand into a new category.
We needed consumers to see Lee Kum Kee not just as a sauce brand, but as a credible full meal solution. That meant building confidence in the quality of the noodles themselves, not just relying on the trust already built through sauces.
Another challenge was balancing education with excitement. When launching a new product, especially in a new category, you need to inform people while still making it feel fresh, engaging, and desirable. Getting that balance right was key to the success of the launch.
Very early on, we focused on the idea of self-expression through food. Food isn’t just functional, it’s emotional, personal, and deeply connected to how people feel.
Noodles are especially interesting in that sense. Everyone cooks them differently, and they act as a blank canvas for creativity. That insight became the foundation of the campaign.
Rather than simply showcasing the product, we wanted to immerse people in what noodles represent. That thinking led us to the campaign platform “Noodles Redoodled,” celebrating creativity, individuality, and emotional connection through food.
Preserving Lee Kum Kee’s heritage was essential. The brand has strong global guidelines and a long history that needs to be respected. At the same time, there was a clear ambition to modernise and reach a new audience.
We achieved this balance by using familiar visual language and rich heritage colours that felt unmistakably Lee Kum Kee, while introducing more modern creative elements through recipe innovation and storytelling.
One example was combining noodles with an Italian carbonara-style recipe. That fusion approach felt fresh and unexpected, while still staying rooted in flavour and quality. It allowed us to respect the brand’s legacy while showing how it can evolve.
We explored a wide range of venues for the experiential activation, but Outernet stood out very quickly.
Its location on Tottenham Court Road, directly opposite the station, offers massive footfall and visibility. More importantly, it provides a fully immersive 360-degree screen environment, which is incredibly rare.
That space allowed the product to become the environment itself. Rather than content simply playing on screens, people were surrounded by the brand, creating a much deeper and more memorable experience.
The wider campaign included a strong brand film, TV advertising, and digital and social executions. Experiential marketing was the point where everything came together.
It allowed us to take the campaign from online into a physical space, where people could see, touch, and taste the product. That physical interaction creates a level of belief and engagement that’s difficult to achieve through digital alone.
The activation also became a key moment for stakeholders, influencers, and buyers to experience the product firsthand, while generating valuable content for PR and social amplification.
We began by identifying what made the product special: texture, flavour richness, and quality. The challenge was translating those qualities into a physical experience.
Immersive screens helped us visually convey movement and texture, while live tastings brought the flavour to life. We also wanted the space to feel playful and expressive, reflecting noodles as a creative canvas.
That led to features like the 3D noodle wall and noodle sofa, tactile installations designed to stop people, spark curiosity, and encourage interaction. The goal was to create a fun, welcoming experience that appealed to a wide audience.
Collaboration was central to the campaign’s success. As a new client, we started with a deep immersion into Lee Kum Kee’s history, culture, product range, and ambitions.
Cultural understanding was especially important, given the brand’s Asian heritage and the campaign’s rollout across the UK and Europe. Eating habits, language, and visual preferences vary across regions, and we needed to account for that while maintaining a consistent core idea.
Open and honest dialogue around risks, opportunities, and expectations helped build trust, allowing us to push creative boundaries while staying aligned on quality and delivery.
The most striking response came from the experiential activation itself. People didn’t just pass through to collect a sample. They stayed, engaged with the screens, interacted with the installations, and fully immersed themselves in the experience.
That high dwell time showed us that the emotional journey we were trying to create was working. Digitally, we also saw strong engagement across social platforms, with people showing genuine curiosity and interest in the product.
Overall, the response exceeded our expectations and reinforced the impact of combining storytelling with real-world experience.
One of the biggest lessons was the importance of grounding a campaign in a strong behavioral insight. That foundation made the campaign feel relevant and meaningful from start to finish.
Another key takeaway is the value of experiential marketing in modern launches. Digital is essential, but giving people the chance to experience a product in real life creates trust and belief.
Thinking holistically about the consumer journey, from online to offline and back again, is something I’ll carry forward into future campaigns.
Yes, definitely. The campaign felt fully cohesive, with a very natural transition between online and offline. That was especially important for a brand like Lee Kum Kee, which is so closely associated with sauces.
To launch noodles successfully, we needed to get the product into consumers’ hands, and the experiential activation made that possible. It reinforced the online campaign through real moments, while content from the event fed back into digital channels. Even people who didn’t attend could see others experiencing it, which helped drive further interest and engagement.
Lee Kum Kee’s noodle launch is a clear example of how brands can evolve without losing their identity. By anchoring the campaign in human insight, respecting heritage, and embracing immersive experience, Together helped transform a category expansion into a meaningful brand moment.
More than just a product launch, the campaign showed how creativity, collaboration, and experiential thinking can work together to build belief, not just awareness.
As brands continue to look for deeper connections with consumers, this project reinforces a simple truth: when people can see, feel, and experience a product, they’re far more likely to believe in it.
If you’re planning a product launch that needs to earn belief, not just attention, Together can help you turn insight into impact.
