The February Open Event for the Leiths School of Food and Wine marked a key moment in the recruitment cycle for the newly evolved Culinary Diploma. With the course redesigned to offer greater flexibility, affordability, and choice for aspiring chefs, the objective for this year’s marketing activity was clear: reach a wider audience and convert interest into meaningful engagement.

Working closely with Leiths, Intelligency Group led the paid media strategy to maximise visibility for the Open Event and drive high-quality registrations. The results demonstrated strong demand for the programme and significant improvements in campaign efficiency compared to previous years.

Strong Attendance from High-Intent Audiences

The February campaign generated hundreds of leads, resulting in record attendance for the Open Event and achieving a lead-to-attendee conversion rate of 37.82%. This represents a substantial improvement on the previous year and highlights a growing level of commitment among prospective students who registered to learn more about the diploma.

Over the last year, we have consistently observed the same registration pattern across our open days. Interest typically builds gradually during the early weeks of promotion before accelerating sharply in the days leading up to the event. The most significant spike in registrations usually occurs three to five days before the event, highlighting the impact that proximity and urgency have on prospective students’ decision-making.

Based on this insight, we have sought to optimise our budget allocation for each open day this year by concentrating spend closer to the event date, when audiences are most likely to convert. As a result, the majority of investment was placed in the final two weeks of promotion, aligning activity with the period of highest conversion efficiency and ultimately contributing to the results achieved.

Google Ads: The Standout Channel

Across the campaign, Google Ads emerged as the most effective paid acquisition channel. The platform generated record numbers of leads and attendees, delivering the highest conversion rate of 43.43% among all marketing channels.

This performance underscores the strength of search-based marketing in reaching audiences actively researching culinary education and career pathways. By capturing users already demonstrating intent, such as those searching for professional cooking courses or culinary diplomas, Google enabled the campaign to reach potential students at the most decisive stage of their decision-making journey.

Overall, the campaign maintained a strong blended cost per lead of £22.77, demonstrating that high-quality engagement could be achieved even with a modest budget and limited flight time.

A Clear Year-on-Year Improvement

When compared to February 2025, the campaign delivered significantly stronger outcomes despite similar lead volumes. Attendance increased and our lead-to-attendee conversion rate rose from +14%pp.

At the same time, marketing efficiency improved, with both cost per lead and cost per attendee decreasing compared to the previous year.

From October–February 2025/26, a total ad spend saw increased ROAS from 15.32 to 27.81 (81.5% improvement compared to the same October–February period in 2024/25), driven by our optimisation of audiences and keywords, alongside leveraging warm audiences and activating new cold audiences.

Supporting the Next Generation of Chefs

With the Culinary Diploma now offering greater flexibility, more accessible pricing, and new finance options, the programme is opening the door to a broader audience of aspiring chefs.

The success of the February Open Event demonstrates how a focused paid media strategy, particularly through high-intent platforms like Google, can effectively connect prospective students with one of the world’s most respected culinary schools.

For Intelligency and Leiths alike, the event represents a strong foundation for continued growth throughout the recruitment cycle.