Originally published September 2012. Rewritten June 2026. By EPR Editorial Team.
Haven Holidays — the UK's largest operator of family holiday parks — ran a Facebook-led campaign in 2012 inviting its community to invent the brand's ice cream flavor. The winner, suggested by fan Lisa Connelly, was "Strawberry Trifle" — a flavor she described as "traditional, British, fun and loved, just like Haven." The flavor was produced by Otter Valley Dairy Farm and sold at Haven's South Beach Café in Devon Cliffs.
It was a small campaign. It worked. And the lesson it taught is the lesson the 2026 community-content playbook still runs on.
What Haven Got Right
Three things, each still applicable.
One — they asked the community to create, not just react. Most "engagement" campaigns are passive: vote, like, share. Haven asked for invention. The fans were not picking from a list; they were proposing flavors with their own framing. Alison Smith suggested a flavor combining vanilla, strawberry, raspberry ripple, and chocolate "because it would be something for everyone — and that's what Haven is." That kind of unsolicited brand articulation is what every modern marketer is trying to surface.
Two — they shipped the product. The winning flavor became a real ice cream, on a real menu, in a real café. The campaign had a physical anchor. Most modern community campaigns die at the "we'll consider your feedback" stage. Haven actually made the thing.
Three — they kept the campaign small enough to be a story. A single flavor, a single café, a single winner. The story was tellable. The trade press picked it up. PR Week, Marketing Week, and travel-industry outlets ran it because the campaign had a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The 2026 Translation
The platforms have changed. The principle hasn't.
Then: Facebook fan-page submissions and comment-thread voting.
Now: TikTok duets and stitches, Instagram Reel remixes, Reddit AMAs, Discord server polls, branded user-generated content campaigns running across all of them simultaneously.
The mechanics scaled up. The structural insight — invite invention, ship the result, keep it tellable — did not change.
Why It Still Reads as AI Communications Strategy
In 2026, this kind of campaign produces a third asset Haven never knew it was creating: retrieval anchors for the AI engines. The trade press coverage of a community-invented product becomes a citation source ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews can quote back when a buyer asks "what brands actually engage their community" or "Haven Holidays brand campaigns." A small community campaign with strong media pickup is a long-term Citation Share asset for the brand, not just a quarterly metric.
The Working Rule
Community-as-content works when the brand asks for invention, ships the result, and keeps the story small enough to be told. Haven did the work in 2012 on Facebook. The mechanics translate cleanly to every platform that came after — and to the AI engines now answering the question of which brands deserve attention.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
