Cool Cookery: raising frozen’s profile

Summary: Our integrated digital marketing and PR campaign communicated the benefits frozen food through web and social content as well as traditional media.

The award-winning campaign helped drive the value of retail frozen food sales to £6.2bn by an impressive 4.8% year-on-year increase.

Tell me more

With a growing focus on health and cooking from scratch, many consumers have tended to view frozen food as the poor alternative to fresh, despite it being of equal or better nutritional quality and costing less. The British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF) briefed Pelican to change consumer attitudes.

The challenge

Research revealed that younger, more affluent family shoppers tended to avoid frozen, viewing it as down-market and of inferior taste and quality to fresh. The problem of the frozen aisle being cold and difficult to shop compared to the chilled and fresh aisles was a further barrier.

The challenge was to attract this younger group of shoppers to grow sales by communicating the quality of frozen food and highlighting premiumisation in the sector.

The Pelican approach

The first step was to understand the target market in more detail. Analysing qualitative and quantitative market research, we identified the need to reach two distinct groups; parents and food lovers.

We analysed media consumption and identified both audiences as high web and social media consumers compared to the national average.

The strategy adopted was based on a core campaign website using social media to drive web traffic and consumer engagement, supported by traditional media relations.

To push our site up Goggle rankings we built links from relevant sources; directory entries, news stories, BFFF members and established bloggers. We also ran regular ‘Rate-My-Recipe’ competitions to win food experiences to keep the site high up the results for chosen search terms.

Facebook and Twitter were used to share information from consumers. We interacted daily, posting news stories, recipe suggestions, parent blogger posts and advice for cooking with frozen.

We also produced a range of content including short ‘stop-motion’ cookery videos for social sharing, in-depth recipe videos with leading chefs and tips on how to store and use frozen food.

The result

The campaign played a key role in helping drive the value of retail frozen food sales by an impressive 4.8% year-on-year.

Statistics, provided by Kantar Worldpanel, revealed that frozen food enjoyed value growth across almost every category in the 52 weeks to 9 September 2018. The retail frozen food market as a whole was worth £6.2bn.

Don’t just take our word for it…

The campaign was recognised with accolades including a  PRide Awards Gold (best use of digital) and MPA Inspiration Awards (PR agency innovation).

Pelican Communications is a specialist in the environment & CSR, food, packaging & logistics and trade association sectors and offers a range of services such as strategy, design,  content creation,  public relations and people development.

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