Mr Kipling

Branding

The brand was created in the 1960s by Rank Hovis McDougall, which wanted to boost cake sales and utilise a new bakery. The brand was launched in 1967 and included 20 products sold in premium boxes. The name, Mr. Kipling, was invented for marketing purposes.

With advertising using the phrase "exceedingly good cakes", and television adverts which originally featured the voice of actor James Hayter, the brand had become the market leader in the United Kingdom by 1976, a position it still holds over forty years later. Varieties of single-serving and individually wrapped cakes have also been marketed.

Around 2005, the manufacturers briefly experimented with another new logo and a striking pack design: pack-fronts simply consisting of the words "Mr Kipling", the name of the cake, and the phrase "Exceedingly good cakes" in a more formal, classic typeface; the only image of the cake on each pack-front was a close-up of one part of it, used as a background image for the entire pack. Around the same time, the write-ups on the back of their packaging once again purported to be written by the person of Mr Kipling. Shortly afterwards, however, the pack design and brand image wholeheartedly returned to its roots. The logo introduced at the time was very closely based on the original one, featuring a traditional-style font in a gold-edged shape, the packs feature images of the cake(s), and various product features and write-ups are featured on the pack-front.

Premier Foods also introduced what it termed 'Snap Pack' packaging (now renamed 'Snack Pack'), providing cakes in individually sealed plastic packs to keep them fresh. It quickly became a top-seller for the brand. Beginning in 2018, Mr Kipling has released a line of Roald Dahl-themed cakes, each based on characters from his children's stories, including a Witches-inspired Halloween special.