We’ve rounded up what we feel are the top ten key considerations for brands to ensure they continue to be aligned with today’s consumer. Take as may of these as you can into consideration when planning your forthcoming food marketing.
Helping challenger brands to explode onto the market
A prestigious food and drink award, particularly one that is voted for independently by consumers and or industry professionals has the power to help a challenger brand explode onto the market and unlock huge sales growth.
If you didn’t happen to be one of the 81 million pairs of eyes that saw our fantastically tongue-in-cheek integrated Food PR & Social Media campaign for family-run Surrey sausage manufacturer, Porky Whites, then perhaps ‘the SAUSIES’ is a new term to you…
Five weeks in and I’m attending my first industry event as a new bean; H2O’s B&I StrEATfood Awards. An opportunity to try different street food concepts, alongside meeting likeminded people within the foodservice industry, whilst also witnessing the creativity of the UK’s best street food chefs in contract catering. H2O Publishing organised an amazing event which did not disappoint.
The annual Arena Savoy Lecture is one of the most hotly anticipated events of our industry. 12 months on from her last lecture Kate Nicholls, CEO of UK Hospitality – which represents 70,000 outlets – was back to share her thoughts on Brexit and what it means for the food and drink industry and food and drink agencies.
As a relatively new bean, this month’s MCA Food Concept Study Tour was a brilliant opportunity for me to gain some great insight into growing food trends, try some delicious food and feed my findings back to the food service design team.
As a leading food and drink agency, the eating out market is our bread and butter (so to speak) which is why we are MCA Insight’s Forum members. One of the benefits of membership is access to their regular debriefs ensuring we are completely up to date on market trends and dynamics, so here are our top ten take-outs from the latest on the eating out market from MCA:
We recently attended the HIM Future of Convenience 2019 event and spent a fascinating day immersed in the exciting and ever-changing world of convenience retail. We heard from an array of speakers from retailers, suppliers and industry experts.
Hot off the press, the B2B Agency Benchmarking Report for 2019 has been issued and I am delighted to announce that Jellybean is ranked 57th overall (so top 60) for all UK B2B agencies and is in 33rd place in the top Integrated B2B agencies in the UK. Drilling deeper we are in the top 25 agencies with less than 50 employees. How proud I am of the hardworking and dedicated team at Jellybean who make this business what it is.
Every year MCA Insight holds its marketing in food service conference allowing food service marketing people to gather and hear from industry leading lights, as well as network and exchange learnings and ideas.
As we lurch awkwardly towards 2019, forcing it to immediately evacuate itself in fear and repulsion, we examine just some of the über trends that definitely won’t make the headlines in the coming food and drink year.
As a long-time supporter of Hospitality Action, we were delighted to support them by creating the marketing material for their Festive Fundraising Dinner: An Evening with Raymond Blanc OBE. This fabulous event will see Raymond Blanc OBE, his Executive Head Chef Gary Jones and Chef Pâtissier Benoit Blin from the two Michelin-starred Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons prepare a lavish Christmas feast at Chino Latino, at The Park Plaza Riverbank in London on Monday 26th November.
Since the days of David vs. Goliath the underdog has won out over the big guys. As the leading food and drink agency, the underdog or as we call it ‘challenger brand mind-set’ is one we love. There is nothing better than shaking-up a market with a new entrant who can re-write the rules and take no prisoners. Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for the big household names and we are lucky enough to work with a number of food and drink big boys across foodservice, convenience, retail and consumer markets, but even when we’re working with the established names we bring a challenger brand mentality to bear.
Thanks to our friends at The Caterer, Jellybean had the delight of attending the 35th Catey Awards at the beautiful Grosvenor House on Park Lane. Our evening was spent celebrating the finest individuals from across the UK’s restaurant, hotel, foodservice and pub & bar sectors and recognising the hard work, passion and dedication that is vital to the success of our hospitality industry.
One of the things I’ve missed most during my time away from foodservice agency; Jellybean has been the buzz of a trade show (for those of you who don’t know, I’ve recently returned for my fifth year at the fabulous agency). Yesterday morning, I slipped on my walking shoes (read: drinking boots), packed my iPad and printed off my visitor pass – I was off to Imbibe Live 2018.
Super-premium extra virgin olive oil brand Morocco Gold, is the latest new client to join the Jellybean food and drink agency family. The owners of the single estate extra virgin olive oil from Morocco appointed Jellybean following a competitive pitch earlier this year. We are excited to be working with this luxury food brand on an integrated B2B and B2C campaign which will create widespread brand awareness and drive long-term sustainable sales through traditional retail and e-commerce channels. Here’s the low-down on this high quality oil.
For an event entitled Alcohol Trends and Innovations the day’s conference included a surprising amount of content around the drive for low and no alcohol. Doubtless driven by those pesky Millennials and Gen Z lot who don’t seem to value the good old fashioned binge drinking culture my generation and those before worked so hard to establish (only joking). Equally the omnipresent march of the health and wellness trend, will have had a fair amount to do with it, as consumers look to reduce calories, drink less and generally consume more wholesome food and drink. That’s not to say volume drinking is dead, Jägermeister themselves don’t condone or promote the ‘Jägerbomb’, but there is no denying this consumer-led ritual is alive and well in UK bars and clubs. However, despite the UK having a drinking population of 30 million (the large majority of whom, 96%, drink within the recommended limits, with only around 4% straying into the realms of ‘a problem’ – I’ll refrain from naming any beans) there is an overall trend for consumers to drink less, but better, with an increased focus on the quality, provenance and brand story. Drink still plays an important part in our social culture, both out of home in bars and restaurants (on trade) and when purchased in retail to drink at home (off trade).
On 8th June two of our beans – Laura and Leigh – joined the MCA Food Study Tour around London to discover the latest food trends that are impacting the out of home market.
This Monday saw the 25th anniversary of the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards held at The Grosvenor House Hotel London. Coined the ‘Oscars’ of the chef world, the awards celebrate excellence across the industry. This year’s awards ceremony was particularly special as it marked a quarter century of these prestigious accolades. The night began in style with the champagne and canapés as guests circulated the Grosvenor House mezzanine level overlooking the impressive Great Room, catching-up with old friends and new. As a leading food and drink agency we were there in force with invites from both Dewberry Redpoint and client McCormick.
As ever, Jellybean Creative the leading foodservice marketing agency were there to support the awards and report back for the Jellybean blog.
The team at the Grosvenor House had the unenviable task of catering for some of the leading chefs in the country on a grand scale (quite an ask) but they did us proud with a delicious four course dinner followed by port and cheese and of course coffee and petit fours. Then it was on to the focus of the night the awards themselves…a drum roll please for the winners…
With the global sales of clean-label products projected to reach $180 billion by 2020*, clean label is no longer an upcoming trend, it’s firmly established.
