Following the success of the Producer of the Year competition, Prominent provided further event and PR support to create a sense of theatre for the East of England Co-op’s Sourced Locally Fortnight 2019 campaign.
This involved putting on four events across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex where each event would focus on one particular product from the Sourced Locally range.
The launch of Sourced Locally Fortnight fell within English Wine Week. With this in mind, we decided to celebrate the launch of Sourced Locally Fortnight by hosting a food and wine pairing afternoon at the home of one of their local producers, Toppesfield Vineyard.
We invited various press and Instagram influencers to taste the Co-op’s carefully selected local produce to pair with local Toppesfield wine. The event also gave us the opportunity to promote the Co-op’s Truly Irresistible range.
Coverage included an article on the EADT, Ipswich Star, Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News websites.
This event allowed us to achieve a piece with a business angle, meaning that we could increase our coverage in Archant titles.
What’s more, this event allowed us to reach out to new blogger and social media influencer contacts, many of which would be interested in working with the East of England Co-op in the future.
The second event took place in Culver Square, Colchester, alongside the Co-op’s All Day Breakfast Roadshow which handed out free sausage baps and fried egg sandwiches to the public.
We invited members of the high street stores in and around Culver Square to take part in a Battle of the Bangers event in which contestants tried to beat the record of eating eight sausages in one minute. The winner managed a total of five!
As the event was on a week day, this gave us an opportunity to target business owners and people working in or around Culver Square. We secured working relationships with Culver Square, Our Colchester and Colchester Streets who helped promote the event on social media. Culver Square and Our Colchester also sent out alerts and an e-newsletter to their members.
Post-event coverage was secured on the Daily Gazette, Clacton Gazette, Halstead Gazette, Braintree and Witham Times, Harwich and Manningtree Standard and Maldon and Burnham Standard.
The third event supported the All Day Breakfast Roadshow at Norwich train station, in which members of the public were treated to a few songs from a fantastic choir (Invidia Voices). The boisterous sound caught the attention of locals.
This event was to draw the attention of passers-by to the All Day Breakfast Roadshow and cause a stir. The choir were well received and created a sense of theatre.
The Suffolk event provided an opportunity for the East of England Co-op to interact with a younger foodie audience.
It not only introduced them to Sourced Locally Fortnight’s hero product, but also to one of Suffolk’s local producers, Vernon Blackmore from Choose Spice. We secured a high-calibre local judging panel which represented local restaurants, owners and Archant food-based journalist Charlotte Smith-Jarvis.
The event was featured on ITV Anglia’s evening news on the day. Archant increased their support by ensuring a videographer was in attendance to capture the activities.This is an opportunity saved for top stories and normally generates more views on online articles.
What’s more, we will feature in Saturday’s EADT where Charlotte Smith-Jarvis has created her own version of one of the team’s dishes from the day (the doughnut burger) and suggested that readers make this for their dad for Father’s Day.
In addition to the press coverage generated through events, we also worked with Archant to create a pre-release which detailed the tour of the All Day Breakfast Roadshow as well as a summary of the Sourced Locally products supplied by the East of England Co-op.
Following the fortnight, a post-press release was created to announce surpassing the £1 million target set. This appeared online and in print over Archant titles including the EDP online and the East Anglian Daily Times.
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