#SushiMe integrated PR campaign

Yutaka had almost 40 years of UK distribution across all major grocers but weak brand recognition and recall, just as familiar restaurant brands like Itsu and Wagamama entered the aisles with built-in fame. The deeper barrier was cultural: sushi is treated as formal and expert-made, which discourages ordinary households from playing with Japanese ingredients at home. As the pioneer that brought sushi rice, soba noodles and katsu curry sauce to UK kitchens, Yutaka could credibly give the nation permission to get playful, making sushi playful rather than precious the same move as lifting brand fame.

Bottle built #SushiMe, celebrity sculpture-portraits made from Yutaka's own sushi range, each with a sushi-pun name and unveiled as a playful London gallery of famous Brits. Making the product the creative medium gave journalists and broadcasters a visual story a low-recall grocery brand could not otherwise buy at scale. The device fed a full integrated push across earned media, broadcast, social and influencer channels, with coverage on BBC, ITV, Sky and The Times; influencer activity ran as one strand, though individual creators are not named in the sources.

The campaign worked because it attacked the actual barrier, sushi formality, and let one device concentrate rather than fragment every channel. Bottle reports 86 pieces of earned coverage, 20 broadcast slots, 27m total reach and a 4% share of voice uplift, plus agency-reported 2025 award wins at the PR Moment Awards and UK PR & Content Awards. An independent GO Network roundup confirms the campaign, agency and named outlets but repeats no numbers; the headline figures are self-reported, and no sales or brand-tracking data is disclosed.