Asparagus growers are celebrating what they described as an outstanding season, during which sales doubled.
A PR campaign, funded by six of the major growers, Mack Multiples, Kitchen Garden Produce, Tuddenham Hall, Bomfords, Barfoot’s of Botley and Exotic Farm Produce along with support from the British Asparagus Growers Association, was declared a major success.
Chris Kitchen, campaign spokesman, speaking at the season review, said print media coverage, with an equivalent ad spend of more than £550,000, was gained, with a total circulation of more than 17 million consumers. A further programme of radio interviews also reached an audience of around 1.6m.
“In total, the campaign saw value sales rise by 51 per cent and volume up 52 per cent on 2004,” he said.
The target for 2005 was to gain a one per cent rise in penetration, however this was smashed with a massive 48 per cent rise to 10.5 per cent for the eight weeks to June 19.
Kitchen said the aim for next year will be to target frequency of purchase: “That is the next thing to tackle because that’s stayed fairly static, we’ve got more and more people buying, but they’re still only buying on average around 2.2 times during the season so we want to aim perhaps for once a week.”
Plans for the 2006 campaign are now being discussed and Kitchen said they would be keen to see Utopia UK and Flamingo, the other two major British asparagus suppliers, join in the promotion, but added the campaign would continue with or without them.
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