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european market
The Keys To Successful
Promotion Campaign Planning —
Words Of Advice
TBY NICOLA PISANO
he stress of planning and designing fruit and vegetable pro- motion campaigns is often the cause of many headaches, not to mention a few extra grey hairs. In 2018, for the rst time,
Freshfel Europe and French research agency Aprifel submitted a pro- posal for a European-wide fruit and vegetable promotion program targeting Millennials under the European Commission’s annual call for promotion and agricultural products programs. If selected, they are 80% co-funded by the European Commission.
Not unlike many funding programs, strict selection criteria and pro- gram planning were required. Although the program was selected to run from 2019-2021, many practical lessons were learned on how to ensure any promotion campaign you embark on
is a success.
After you’ve decided that a promotion cam- paign is right for you, or you’ve found out if you’re eligible to apply for a funding program, the rst step in any promotion campaign is to carry out a detailed market analysis. Your mar- ket analysis should focus on campaign target areas, whether local, regional, national or inter- national. These target areas will form the basis for de ning your campaign objectives and strat- egy. Cover as many supply-and-demand factors as possible, including market structure and posi- tion, competitors, competitive advantages, sup- ply channels, target group sociodemographics, consumption trends and the state of consumer awareness. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weak- nesses, Opportunities and Threats) per target area also can be useful along with identifying any similar current or past actions.
Based on your market analysis, de ning
your campaign objectives should be simple. Coherence between your market analysis results and your objectives is key. We found that de- veloping SMART objectives that are ‘Speci c,’ ‘Measureable,’ ‘Achiev- able,’ ‘Results-focused’ and ‘Time-bound’ can provide an organized framework for your campaign, especially if divided into main and in- termediate objectives. We also asked ourselves if our objectives were aimed at economic return or informative return on raising awareness.
You may already have a promotion strategy in mind, but how you reach your objectives will determine the real breadth of the campaign. Preliminary elements to consider when planning your campaign ac- tivities are identifying your target groups and how you’ll be tailoring your strategy to them and differentiating between trade and consumer activities, as well as validating that your chosen activities relate to your objectives. We explained how we planned to adapt our promo- tion strategy to the various different EU Member State markets that we were targeting, but if you’re focusing on economic return, you can
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also establish where growth will come from through your activities. Nowadays, with many fruit and vegetable campaigns having highly extensive communication toolkits, it’s essential to describe and justi- fy your planned communications mix. It doesn’t hurt to ‘shop around’ and see what’s already on the market, especially if you would like to give a creative edge to your activities. Though precise, often obvious communication details are some of the more tedious aspects to plan — elaborating planned key messages, their preliminary content, format and sources is fundamental to a well-designed campaign. Don’t skip any legislative research on health regulations or guidelines for relaying
messages on proper dietary practices either.
After toiling over your budget, determining
the budget allocated per activity deliverable and target area, you can now focus on one of the most important aspects of campaign planning — measurement of results. The more highly detailed your measurement plan is, the more likely your promotion campaign will be successful.
For example, we planned out our method- ology for measuring our objectives with the aim of de ning a list of output, result and impact indicators and setting out a minimum quality of evaluations to be used. This is no- toriously one of the most dif cult areas of a campaign to plan correctly.
Let’s take the measurement of a TV ad- vertisement. The output indicator measuring whether activities are implemented according to the plan could be whether the number of TV spots where the ad was aired in one year was per the evaluation plan. The result indicator
measuring whether the foreseen outcome of the activity was achieved could be whether the outreach and exposure number of the advertise- ment per year was per the evaluation plan. Finally, the impact indicator measuring whether the objective of the campaign was met could be the number of people whose opinion/awareness was changed as a result of the advertisement per year was per the evaluation plan.
Lastly, if you establish the organization and management struc- ture of your campaign early on, this will set you up for good project management from the get go. Don’t forget that this includes outlining a project timeline, risk management planning and quality control pro- cedures. Good luck with your promotion program planning. For some promotion inspiration, visit Freshfel Europe’s and Aprifel’s Follow Me To Be Healthy With Europe campaign at 400gchallenge.eu. pb
Nicola Pisano is communications manager and policy advisor at Freshfel Europe — the forum for the fresh produce industry. Freshfel Europe is based in Brussels, Belgium.
With many fruit and vegetable campaigns having highly extensive communication toolkits, it’s essential to describe and justify your planned communications mix. It doesn’t hurt to ‘shop around’ and see what’s already on the market, especially if you would like to give a creative edge to your activities.