Back in 2019 I wrote about dog friendly dining (a subject close to my own heart, as Mum to our ‘office dog’ Whisky). Since then, we have seen dog ownership explode. With Covid lockdowns and more working from home, those who had always wanted a dog but felt they couldn’t, took the plunge and got a furry friend. Whether it was for company, for the kids, or just because, UK citizens opened their homes to man’s best friend. Indeed, the BBC reported back in March that UK households had bought 3.2million pets in lockdown (a large proportion of them dogs)! Whilst according to the Pet Food Manufacturers Association (PFMA) a third of households now have a dog. That’s 12.5 million dogs. Great news for the members of PFMA, but also a huge opportunity for hospitality businesses.
Gone are the days of complex baking cookbooks and inaccessible recipes. The past five years have seen a massive increase in the self-made baking blogger, releasing easy, contemporary, and innovative recipes for all online. They now occupy a space that used to be inhabited only by top pastry chefs and the formally trained. Not only do we look to baking bloggers to review and recommend the best baking ingredients, but we also turn to them for recipes on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and now buy their published cookbooks.
The hospitality and retail sector continue to be plagued with problems, from staff shortages to supply chain chaos. However, pop open the (English) bubbly! As there is hope to be had where British booze is concerned!
As London Cocktail week is now all of October (nice!) we thought we’d share some of the Beans’ favourites. According to international research from Brandwatch, Margaritas are the most popular cocktail followed by Martini, Mimosa, Bloody Mary, and Manhattan. But closer to home it is safe to say, us Beans have found solace in a wide range of cocktails over the past 18 months (of course, all drunk responsibly!). We are after all a leading food and drink agency so really, it’s research. Isn’t it?
Long ago if you wanted to make sure your promotions didn’t fall foul of the law you simply had to turn to ISP (Institute of Sales Promotion), check the CAP code and ASA guidelines. Of course, these days it’s not ISP it’s IPM (Institute of Promotional Marketing)and often times it’s not an on-pack promo or ad, but a social media promotion.
Charities have been one of the hardest hit sectors throughout the past 18 months both globally and much closer to home. Over its 35 year history, jellybean has sponsored literally hundreds of children and supported education projects in Africa through Plan International but in 2021, as we emerge from the effects of the pandemic, we wanted to keep things local and thus donated £10,000 to White Lodge in Chertsey to help save their Hydrotherapy pool and a further £10,000 to CWSNF, a Surrey based charity that I have been a patron of for many years. All funds raised through the foundation go straight to the point of need (all staff donate their time and expertise) and as a result CWSNF has a wide range of worthy applications to consider and allocate much needed funds to across the year. I was particularly delighted when the money was granted to an application from Woodlands School in Leatherhead (just a driver and 5 iron from jellybean HQ) to install Audio and Visual equipment in their Upper School Hall. What could be more worthy and more local than that!
The Latest from Lumina Intelligence’s Food Strategy Forum
As a leading food and drink agency we make it our business to keep up to date with the latest eating out market trends. Each of the Lumina briefings is hotly awaited to see what they have to share with us as we use these key market insights to inform our planning and strategy for clients in foodservice and the hospitality market. This session looked at the current status of the market and predictions up until 2024 with a focus on the pub and bar sector pulling on findings from their latest report.
The lowest hanging fruit in all SEO is in the hands of the least tech savvy people. Writers.
Text on the web is perhaps Google’s favourite content as it is so easily ‘machine readable’.
With some sound advice it’s possible to take your simple blogs, articles, case studies and press releases, and super-charge them into top SEO content that will get you noticed online.
There’s been a nice rumbling around the office in recent weeks. A new energy and excitement that comes from one thing only – live events. As we’ve gone through September, the office has been full of colleagues planning events, attending functions and swapping stories.
As a proud Hospitality Action Ambassador, I thought I knew all there was to know about Hospitality Action, but in the inaugural Ambassadors Briefing even I came away having learnt a thing or two.
Award season has arrived, and with it, not one, but two wins at the inaugural Alliance of Independent Agencies Wing Awards.
Tuesday 14th saw us walk away (figuratively as it was a virtual event) with both the Best B2B Campaign Award and Freedom Award for Agency Collaboration – one of three special awards recognising outstanding performance across areas where independent agencies have the freedom to excel.
The popularity of Veganuary, Meatless Mondays and even National Vegetarian day is well known, with much of the media covering it and becoming trends on social media. However, Organic September has nowhere near as much cover (I also wish the name was a bit catchier, why they don’t use alliteration and go for ‘Organic October’ – ‘Orgtober’ – or ‘Natural November’ is beyond me).
We are always proud of the work we do for clients and treat the brands we work on as if they are our own. So when it comes to choosing which campaigns we put forward for awards it can be tough. This year we entered both the Alliance of Independent Agencies inaugural Wing Awards and the Oscars of the B2B world the B2B Marketing Awards. With bated breath we awaited the shortlist announcements of both and we are delighted to say that we made the grade with the both campaigns shortlisted for the categories entered, with…
People watch an average of 16 hours of online video per week, which is a 52% increase in the last two years.
Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image content combined.
Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
86% of people would like to see more video from brands.
68% of consumers prefer watching videos to learn about new products or services, as compared to articles, infographics, ebooks, and presentations.
82% would rather watch live video than read social media posts.
Note: This doesn’t mean blogging or social media posts are dead! Both of these forms of content are a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy, especially for SEO and reputation.
Consumers who end up on an e-commerce site through a user-generated video are 184% more likely to purchase, and spend 45% more.
64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos.
Half the joy of travelling is all the food you get to eat, from tapas to ramen, the world is full of flavours that are ready to be explored. However, with foreign travel being fraught with problems this summer, I have instead decided to explore a few cookbooks that champion foreign flavours so to con my body into thinking I’m abroad.
If you see yourself as a culinary fan who has tasted foods from all over the world but has not yet explored Caribbean dishes, are you really a true culinary fan? In Caribbean culture, food is an integral aspect of life with many people spending days upon days preparing their food.
Jellybean has always been active in supporting a wide range of charities in its 34-year history and this year is no exception. In 2019 we helped build classrooms in the Gambella region of Ethiopia and in 2020 we supported a programme to continue education for girls in Zimbabwe as they struggled through the impacts of the global pandemic.
Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain and chair of the National Food Strategy, was commissioned by government to execute an independent review on how to achieve a sustainable and fair food system. The terrible health crisis that took over the world in 2020 has shown with alarming clarity the damage being done to our health by the modern food system. Diet related illness is one of the top three risk factors for dying of Covid-19 and has cemented the need for the UK government and businesses to take bold action and revamp its National Food Strategy Plan.
It’s safe to say that hospitality is nestled within everybody’s hearts, playing an important role in one way or another. Whether it’s through the fond memories of celebrating a birthday, heading to the local pub to reconnect with old friends or whether it’s where you learnt the true value of tip money for those all-important cocktails that weekend.
