A naked glamour model, a celebrity chef and strong healthy eating messages proved a recipe for success for the watercress industry's "Not Just a Bit on the Side" PR campaign, which has scooped one of the industry's top PR awards.
Wendy Akers Public Relations, which developed the campaign for The Watercress Alliance, fought off stiff competition to win the Consumer Relationship category in the 2004 Institute of Public Relations Excellence Awards. The campaign, which was funded by the UK's three biggest producers, Geest, Vitacress Salads and The Watercress Company, helped revitalise the industry and boost sales by £1.75 million, turning a 15 per cent year-on-year sales decline into an 11 per cent increase.
Wendy Akers commented: "We used humour to bring some excitement to this traditional sector, while allowing communication of the key message that watercress is nutritionally too important to be used as just a garnish. The "Not Just A Bit on the Side" strapline was run across all activities, which included a tongue in cheek photo call of page three model Jo Guest lying 'American Beauty' style, garnished in watercress, to launch National Watercress Week. Celebrity chef Phil Vickery, of ITV's This Morning, and leading nutritionist Lyndel Costain, of BBC1's Diet Trials, were also brought on board to help target the food and health writers.
She added: "We are absolutely delighted to win the award. It is a great endorsement of our work. We are already starting work on the 2005 campaign and have some really exciting events planned - so watch this space!"
Sponsored by Digital-Photo, the Excellence Awards recognise and reward best practice in public relations throughout the country, and acknowledge personal and team achievement at the highest professional level. The judging procedures are rigorous and test the impact of the practice of public relations on society as a whole.
Wendy Akers and her colleague Nicole Ennis, accompanied by Jo Guest, were presented with the award. The host for the evening was Janet Street-Porter, Editor at Large, the Independent on Sunday.
The IPR received more than 500 entries for the 19 award categories, the highest number to date and a 50 per cent increase on last year.
The judges said: "Making watercress fashionable must have been the client brief from hell - with a product which appears on the face of it to be as interesting as watching paint dry! All credit then to Wendy Akers and her colleagues for work which was well-planned, superbly implemented and continued to surprise throughout the life of the campaign."
