All the latest news from Bord Bia

MUSHROOMS CAMPAIGN DELIVERS

The €2 million ‘Mushrooms Complement Everything’ campaign ran over the past three years in the UK and Ireland. This campaign which was co-financed by the EU, included recipe videos, digital advertising, and social media, and was aimed at women of 25-45 years old. The campaign was designed to tap into flexitarianism, now an established food trend based on eating a blend of plant content and lower meat content foods. The campaign was based on ‘bringing on the blend’, combining minced meat with chopped up mushrooms to produce tasty meals which are lower in fat and calories. The three-year campaign delivered a good return on investment, accumulating impressive results both on campaign reaction and market impact:

Sixty-six million impressions on the digital campaign

• Four million video views
• Over a million website visits
• Twenty per cent increase in retail mushroom sales in the UK market
• Fifteen per cent increase in retail mushroom sales in the Irish market. ✽

LET’S GROW – BORD BIA’S 2021 GARDENING CAMPAIGN

The successful GroMór campaign ran for 7 years with sponsorship from Bord Bia and other industry partners. This year, Bord Bia will take on the gardening campaign, rebranded as Let’s Grow. Campaign names were tested in an online survey, and Let’s Grow was judged to best fit the campaign objectives of making gardening and growing, easy and accessible to less knowledgeable and new gardeners.

The campaign information will be housed on the Bord Bia website and new assets such as videos and social media content are being developed, to help build a community of gardeners. There will be a calendar of planned activities, including PR, social media content and targeted digital advertising, all sending the consumer back to the gardening pages on the Bord Bia website which will be the anchor for content.

The campaign was developed to reflect the interests of the 2.6 million gardeners in Ireland, the new ‘lockdown’ gardeners and younger gardeners, many of whom are renting, and also the increased interest in growing food. The campaign will focus on how gardening can be an enjoyable and successful activity for everyone, when armed with the right information, and also on plants that grow well in Ireland. The current garden centre listing will be improved with a map link, with an ambition to compile a plant finder for Irish grown plants, by searching by seasonal interest, growing conditions, or colour. ✽

SPORTING HEROES ENCOURAGING HEALTHY EATING HABITS

In a joint collaboration between the Food Dudes and School Milk Scheme programmes, sporting heroes world champion boxer Kelly Harrington and all Ireland GAA player Philly McMahon will take part in a series of educational videos, targeting DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) schools, which will be available from April 12th. The videos will empower primary schoolchildren to adopt healthy eating habits while promoting the importance of physical activity.

In addition to perishable and non-perishable provisions provided to DEIS schools under the ‘School Meals Scheme’, children attending DEIS schools also received healthy-eating food packs containing fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy during the recent school closures. The supplementary weekly pack was provided by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. In Ireland, the EU School Fruit and Vegetable and Milk schemes are implemented in primary schools under both the Food Dudes Healthy Eating Programme delivered by Bord Bia and the Moo Crew Programme delivered by the National Dairy Council (NDC). Bord Bia and the NDC have now joined forces to deliver this new initiative. ✽

INCREDIBLE EDIBLES KEEP WELL EVENT

On March 25th over 25,000 primary school children from 1,000 schools took part in a recent Incredible Edibles Keep Well Day when they joined two virtual events, featuring well-known fitness trainer, Ray Lally, aka The Happy Fitness Guy, and horticulturist, Brian McCarthy, who runs the unique Cork Rooftop Farm in Cork City. The Happy Fitness Guy, who features on RTE’s Today Show, hosted a fun-filled fitness session showcasing the importance of keeping active and looking after your physical and emotional well-being. Brian McCarthy of Cork Rooftop Farm, wowed viewers with an engaging tour of his skyline farm and answered sowing and growing questions. The Incredible Edibles Keep Well event was held in conjunction with Healthy Ireland’s Keep Well Campaign, as part of the Government Plan for Living with Covid-19 – Resilience and Recovery 2020-2021.

Dr Elizabeth Finnegan, Healthy Eating Executive at Bord Bia noted that a record number of schools registered to participate in the Programme this year and underlined Bord Bia’s delight in being able to showcase the important work Incredible Edibles is doing in schools, promoting fun and interactive ways children, schools, families and communities can get active in the garden.

You can watch the Incredible Edibles Keep Well event here https://youtu.be/gdMZqZRlGzY ✽

DEVELOPING RESILIENCE THROUGH ACTIVITY

Bord Bia are delighted to partner with Healthy Ireland on the government’s ‘Keep Well’ campaign. Remote working and self-isolating means the home is currently the centre of our world. Eating well and staying active, especially outdoors, is so important to overall health and mental wellbeing. Through this campaign, Bord Bia will encourage people of all ages to stay active in their outdoor spaces by showing how easy and fun it can be. Bord Bia have worked with Fiann O‘Nualláin to develop videos and content for social media to showcase gardening as an all year round activity and to provide inspiration on looking after your garden space to have a bountiful, colourful display in the Spring. ✽

BREXIT ACTION PLAN

A webinar; ‘Bord Bia’s UK Import Controls Webinar’ was held on the 21st March, this is available on the Bord Bia website. Review the latest edition of Bord Bia’s Brexit Action Plan to ensure you are ready for the new Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) and customs controls for food and drink products imported into Great Britain from the 1st of October, 2021. ✽

SPRING TROLLEY FAIR

Bord Bia hosted the annual Spring Trolley Fair, supporting the Irish Hardy Nurserystock Association (IHNSA) in conjunction with the IFA on Tuesday March 9th. This annual event marks the start of the nursery season, and this year was hosted on a dedicated platform with 100 attendees at the virtual event. The event was opened by Bord Bia CEO Tara McCarthy, followed by the presentation of two pieces of research, conducted by The Thinking House; the IPSOS ‘Value of the Garden Market Report 2020’ and a qualitative study, ’Preparing for a Post-Covid19 Horticultural World’, measuring behaviours of new and returning gardeners during Covid restrictions and how to retain them as consumers. This was followed by one to one buyer meetings between visitors and the twelve nursery exhibitors. In advance of the event, training and mentoring sessions were offered to the exhibitors, including guidance on using the specialised platform, video production training with Carr Communications and mentoring with James Burke and Associates on presenting and negotiating in a virtual setting. ✽