Brindleyplace, BirminghamCase study · Instagram campaign
shhh...
Birmingham's best
kept secret,
not so secret now.
Turtle Bay Brindleyplace is one of Turtle Bay's Caribbean restaurants and bars, on Oozels Square in Birmingham, two minutes' walk from the Utilita Arena. A four-week campaign with a self-aware launch, a giveaway that spread through the comments and a collab with an award-winning fashion designer grew its own Instagram following by 478%, on £35 of paid advertising.
A real partnership. Turtle Bay's team hosted and posted; AYR Marketing planned, scripted, edited, designed and ran the giveaway.
01 · The starting point
A jerk pit and almost no audience
The venue had everything a good Instagram feed needs: a jerk pit (an open-flame grill for Caribbean jerk chicken), two floors of rum, a resident DJ every Friday and Saturday, and 2-4-1 cocktails every day. What it didn't have was an audience: every post played to an almost empty room.
We started with an audit of the account and its reviews. The content itself was decent; the problem was reach. Nothing was borrowing anyone else's audience: no collabs with other accounts, no creator visits, no reason for guests to share. The reviews also kept naming the same members of staff, which told us who belonged on camera.
So we turned being unknown into the hook. The launch post called the venue Birmingham's best kept secret and invited people to follow before everyone else found out.
02 · The plan
Borrow reach. Turn it into followers.
Better posts alone couldn't fix that: without an audience, even a great reel reaches almost no one. So the plan borrowed three things the account didn't have yet: other people's audiences, people nearby who were already deciding where to eat, and the trust that real faces earn. All three pointed at one big campaign.
Borrowed audiences
We brought a well-known creator to the venue and posted his reel as a collab: one Instagram post that appears on both accounts, so his followers met the venue without having to go looking for it.
78K-follower creatorBorrowed intent
The Utilita Arena is a two-minute walk away. On big show nights, reels and stories spoke straight to the thousands of gig-goers walking past, right when they're deciding where to eat.
“Eat 2 minutes from the door”Borrowed trust
People trust people more than logos, so the bar team and real nights out took the spotlight: a bartender making a Bahama Mama, one of the bar's rum cocktails; a Sip 'N' Paint evening, where guests paint with a drink in hand; and a reel inviting gig-goers in before an arena show.
2.4x the views of offer-only reelsThe launch owned the small follower count instead of hiding it. Three days later, a giveaway gave every viewer a reason to tag their friends, so each comment put the venue in front of someone new.
03 · The giveaway
One reel. 1,773 comments.
The prize was bottomless brunch for two. To enter, people followed the account and tagged friends in the comments of one reel. Every tag sent an Instagram notification to someone new, so the reel kept reaching people far beyond the venue's own followers for almost four weeks.
- Follow @turtlebaybrindleyplace
- Tag friends in the comments: one entry per friend, up to 15
- Share it to your story for an extra entry every day
The entire paid ad budget for the campaign. Every number on this page was reached on it.
Added midway and drawn at random from every valid entry, live on camera, so people who joined late still had a real chance.
Instagram prize draws must follow the UK advertising code, policed by the Advertising Standards Authority. We wrote the full terms as 9 story slides and saved them to the profile, so anyone could read them before entering.
04 · The creator collab
His outfit, as a cocktail.
Jashaan Gill is a Fashion Designer of the Year and the first British Punjabi designer at New York Fashion Week. We wrote the concept and the production plan: Turtle Bay's bartender got a photo of his outfit and one afternoon to turn it into a drink, and Jashaan tasted the result on camera.
There was no fee: Jashaan was hosted at the venue. The reel went out as a collab post, live on his account and the venue's at the same time, which put Turtle Bay in front of his 78,000 followers. A fashion designer judging a cocktail is an unexpected pairing, and that's what makes people stop scrolling.
- Fashion Designer of the Year
- First British Punjabi designer at NYFW
- 78K Instagram followers
05 · The results
Engagement up 1,355% on the month before
Likes and comments on the campaign's reels, against the reels the venue posted in the month before it started. Total paid advertising behind it: £35.
Turtle Bay's head office featured our Bahama Mama cocktail reel on @turtlebayuk, the brand's national Instagram account, with about 80K followers.
How we steered it
Measured every week. Changed every week.
Four weekly performance reviews and a final one, each running the same loop:
- Measure
- Diagnose
- Change
- Test
The dataOnly 15% of the giveaway reel's views came from people Instagram was showing it to for the first time.
What we didWe went after new audiences: a fashion designer with 78,000 followers, and QR flyers on every bill and the front door.
The dataA bartender making a cocktail drew 2.7 times the views of an offer reel posted a day apart.
What we didPeople moved to the centre: the designer collab led the final week, and the scripts we handed over put the team first.
£35Not one of these changes needed ad spend. The whole campaign, start to finish, ran on just £35 of it.
06 · What we made
73 pieces for one campaign
Every one of them made by AYR Marketing: scripts, edits, graphics, print and performance reviews.
- 14reel scripts
- 13reels edited
- 16stories
- 9T&Cs cards
- 6highlight covers
- 4reel covers
- 3feed posts
- 5performance reviews
- 3print pieces
A few of them, up close
Highlight covers
After Dark
Brunch
Find us
Win
Island Nights
T&Cs07 · After the campaign
The campaign ended. The momentum didn't.
When the giveaway closed, we didn't just hand over a report. We left the venue everything it needs to keep growing on its own, each piece built on what the campaign's numbers proved works.
A ready-to-run monthly giveaway, built to keep new followers coming in long after the campaign.
A simple in-venue game that turns people already eating there into followers.
Two months of content, written and timed to the dates that fill restaurants.
The rules behind the campaign's best reels, drawn from the venue's own numbers.
08 · The takeaway
The secret’s out.
Four weeks, one restaurant and £35 of ad spend. Here’s what AYR Marketing brought to the table.
- StrategyA full audit, three growth levers and a 30-day content calendar
- Reel scripts14 for the campaign, plus 15 for November and December
- Editing13 reels edited and captioned for Instagram
- Design38 graphics: stories, T&Cs cards, highlight covers, reel covers and posts
- PrintA5 flyer, A3 door poster and A6 table talker, each with a QR code
- GiveawayRules written to the UK ad code, 1,942 entries checked, two winners verified
- Creator collabConcept and production plan for a 78K-follower fashion designer
- Performance reviewsFour weekly reviews and a final one: what the numbers said and what we changed
×AYR MarketingMade with the Turtle Bay Brindleyplace team, who hosted every shoot and posted every reel.
Your turn
Want a campaign like this?
Tell us what you want more of: followers, bookings or people through the door.
Figures from the venue's public Instagram profile and the giveaway's final count, October 2026. “The month before” means the reels the venue posted in the four weeks before launch. Turtle Bay's name, logo, photography and reels appear with the venue's permission.