In a move without precedent in the soft-fruit sector, nine importers have joined forces to promote winter berries.
The companies have appointed Sputnik Communications to promote the health benefits of their fruit to the media through the winter and spring.
The aim of the promotional strategy is to build on and extend the success of Sputnik's British Summer Fruits summer campaign and position berries as modern, everyday, super-foods and so sustain sales through the winter. Once British berries come on stream again, the baton will be reprised by the British Summer Fruits campaign.
"This is a truly unique undertaking for the fresh produce industry," said Laurence Olins, chairman of the winter-berry campaign. "Rarely has a category of fruit had a year-round campaign supporting the same health messages, with both the summer and winter companies involved working together. We are very excited about the opportunities this may create for the overall benefit of all berry-fruit growers worldwide. "
The invitation to join the campaign was extended to 11 importers and the nine that have signed up are: Angus Soft Fruit, Berry World, KG Fruit, S&A Produce, Summer Fruit Company, Alconera UK, Rodanto, T&JB Produce and Lisons.
The firms between them represent some 90 per cent of supplies to UK supermarkets.
In order not to differentiate from the British Summer Fruit campaign its winter berry counterpart will not highlight any individual berry or the country of origin.
Berry World's Olins has been working tirelessly on the campaign for two months.
It will be predominantly editorial-led and focus on key seasonal events such as Christmas, New Year, Valentines Day and Easter using appropriate health messages. Targets include the health, beauty and lifestyle pages of newspapers and magazines as well as the broadcast media. A new website is due to be launched shortly to back up the campaign at www.winterberries.co.uk
"We will have material coming out before Christmas, but we are already working on the long lead-time pieces for Valentine's Day, for example," said Olins.
The campaign has already had a warm reception from campaign members' key customers. "We have had very positive reports from the supermarkets," said Olins. "It is an information passing exercise to make sure they are fully aware of what we are doing and can link in with it if they want to."
The only similar campaign in recent UK fresh-produce history was the highly successful Banana Group of 1990s. "We have mirrored much of what they did," said Olins. "But in many ways it has been harder for us as we are dealing with different players in the summer and winter rather than the same, year-round suppliers in the banana business."
No comments yet