Promoting James Haskell and Omar Mezaine’s book Cooking for Fitness into an Amazon Top 5 bestseller.

The Work

James had previously published two books, but this was his first cookbook and first collaboration with England football team chef, Omar Meziane.

To make Cooking For Fitness stand out in the overly saturated cookbook market, we drew out unique and interesting components of Cooking For Fitness and positioned these as distinctive focal points for James and Omar to discuss in interviews.

We also used recipe extracts to provide original content for food and lifestyle media, and pitched Omar to outlets to add depth to the campaign. Although James’ pre-existing profile helped to attract instant media attention, we made sure that the messaging and conversations we used around him was specific to health and fitness, so that the attention remained on the book, rather than James’ celebrity.

The book was published around the same time as the Six Nations, and we used this as an effective news hook, to put Omar forward for interviews and comment on what international rugby players diet would involve.

Both James and Omar’s schedules were so busy, as they worked full time for sports teams. To combat this and we coordinated with the head of sport at the BBC to maximise opportunities on the days that James and Omar were available.