An in-house agency at a bakery? Gail’s Head of Brand, Charlotte Gunn, reveals how she codified the brand, built a creative studio from scratch and turned bakeries into brand experiences.
Welcome to the Marketing Hustle - a podcast about the real work behind building bold brands. We go behind the scenes with founders and marketing leaders to hear honest, unfiltered stories of what actually drives growth and cuts through the noise to build something that lasts.
Today’s guest is Charlotte Gunn, Head of Brand at Gail’s Bakery - the fast-scaling chain that’s rewriting what a “bakery brand” means in the UK. Charlotte was tasked with two huge challenges: codify the brand so everyone in the business knows what “being on-brand” means and build an in-house creative team that could replace traditional agencies.
In this conversation, Charlotte opens up about what it takes to run a brand-led creative studio inside a food business, why brand lives in experiences (not guidelines) and how Gail’s has made brand everyone’s job – from bakery managers to ops teams.
We also dive into:
Why in-housing creative makes sense for scale-ups (not just Adidas or Lego)
How Gail’s trains 170 bakeries to deliver consistent brand experiences
The “brilliant basics & magic moments” framework powering community love
Why storytelling, not campaigns, is the real moat for growing food brands
How to protect brand soul while scaling 40+ new bakeries a year
This is a masterclass in brand-building that goes way beyond croissants.