Food & Health Alliance

Workshop 4. Social marketing

Participants at the social marketing workshop heard how three national food campaigns – Eat More Fish, Love Food, Hate Waste and the Scottish Food and Drink Fortnight – are already having a measurable impact on people’s consumption habits.

Love Food, Hate Waste

Lyndsay Boylan, Assistant Campaign Manager with Waste Aware Scotland, said the first phase of the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign, launched in 2007, had already led to 200,000 households in Scotland taking steps to reduce their waste. The result was £40 million savings a year, equivalent to 70,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition the campaign had seen a 54% increase in visits to its website. And 25 out of 32 Scottish local authorities were now actively engaged in promoting the campaign.

Phase one of the campaign had concentrated on raising awareness of the problem (Scottish households throw away 566,000 tonnes of food waste each year, around two thirds of which could be avoided) and providing households with practical advice. These focused on four areas – food preparation, storage, portion sizes and recipe ideas as well as seasonality and buying locally.

The organisers were now planning a second phase which would concentrate more on saving money, the campaign slogan asking consumers: ‘Want to save £430 a year?’

Research for the campaign identified three key barriers that stopped people cutting down on their waste:

1. Many people were in denial about the amount of food waste they produced. Almost 60% of households believed they threw away only small or negligible amounts of food
2. A lack of planning. Nearly a quarter of people never planned their meals and a third rarely wrote a shopping list. Many did not know where to store fresh produce or what was the best portion size. And there was confusion about the ‘best before’ and ‘use by’ labelling system
3. Consumers said they would be more willing to play their part if they could see others making an effort. The perception was that retailers were doing very little

In fact, said Lyndsay, retailers have been undertaking a number of initiatives to reduce waste, for example by having ‘buy one, get one later’ or ‘buy one, freeze one’ offers rather than the usual buy one, get one free. The campaign has also been working with Morrison’s and the Co-op on other initiatives. The Co-op now provides tips on how to store fresh produce while Morrison’s is promoting single item purchases such as one chop or one sausage.

The latest phase of the campaign has three main strands:

1. Raising awareness of the amount of food wasted and connecting people with the food they waste, in particular stressing the costs of that food waste
2. Providing practical advice on what consumers can do to reduce waste
3. Raising awareness among consumers of the retail initiatives to reduce waste and linking this to consumer action.

Results from early trials in six Scottish areas were encouraging with a third saying they had made positive changes to reduce the amount of food waste. In addition 62% were more aware of waste and a third had made positive changes to cut waste. Sixty per cent had bought less as a result of the campaign and 11% had reduced their portion sizes. Of those who had made changes around a quarter said they had cut their waste by a half or more and a third had reduced it by a quarter – although objective measurements suggest people tend to over-estimate the impact of the changes they make.

Eat More Fish

Scotland’s Eat More Fish campaign has been so successful in its first six months that it has now been extended and will continue to next March, Nicki Holmyard, Head of Communications with Seafood Scotland, told the workshop.

The campaign was launched in March 2009 with the twin aims of boosting the seafood industry at a time of recession and encouraging more people in Scotland to eat fish.

Its key messages were:

• Fish is a healthy food to eat
• Dietary advice is to eat at least two portions of fish a week
• It’s simple to prepare and cook and delicious to eat
• It needs to be sustainable and environmentally friendly
• It will support the Scottish seafood industry

The Scottish Government set up a micro site on its own website with details about the campaign. The two main strands of the campaign were a young chef competition that attracted considerable press interest as well as the Taste of Edinburgh Festival promoting seafood to the public. Over 10,000 people visited the festival and more than 5,000 seafood dishes were served.

Overall the campaign was a big success, said Nicki, and managed to stretch its £24,000 budget a long way. After six months of the campaign sales of all types of fish had risen by 10% in value and 6% in volume while fresh seafood sales increased by 10% in value and 12% in volume over the same period. The campaign also won gold and silver CIPR awards.

Seafood Scotland has now been asked by the Scottish Government to extend its campaign through to next March. This will include another consumer show.

It will also involve supermarket promotions as well as working with six schools and liaising with a chain of gastropubs to encourage more seafood on their menus. In addition the organisers are planning a seminar on the benefits of seafood for consumer journalists.

Scottish Food Fortnight

Anna Davies, Communications and Marketing Manager with Scotland Food & Drink, described how her organisation had taken on and organised the Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight this September with the aim of celebrating Scottish produce and promoting the benefits of fresh, seasonal food.

The wider objective, she said, was to raise awareness and change people’s behaviour over the whole year but the fortnight from 5-20 September was the principal focus.

The fortnight included a range of events with retailers, restaurants and hotels who were encouraged to put on special Scottish-themed menus. There were also special promotions at Sainsbury’s and Waitrose as well as support from a number of celebrities including chefs Phil Vickery and Andrew Fairlie and food writer Wendy Barrie. The industry also held a well-attended promotional event in the Scottish Parliament.

Anna said the industry was pleased with the coverage, particularly since there was little extra funding for the event, but recognised they needed to improve next year.

‘One of the ideas we’re mulling over is to have something much wider involving a call to action and whether the commitment to eat Scottish for a fortnight should be extended,’ she said.

There would also be a bigger focus on the health attributes of Scottish food, something that had not been a high priority in the past. Health was an increasingly important motivating factor for people, she said. Scotland Food & Drink hoped to work closely with organisations like the FHA to ensure they covered as many aspects of the healthy eating agenda as possible.

In answer to questions about the impact on those on lower incomes, Anna accepted the need to broaden its appeal. ‘We want to expand it,’ she said, ‘but we have to do it carefully and slowly because we have an extremely loyal following and we wouldn’t want to lose them. But we are trying to make it much more inclusive.’

Asked if it was possible to eat only Scottish food and eat healthily, she had no doubts. It was admittedly more difficult in the winter months but it was amazing what was out there. People could also make much better use of their freezer. ‘For instance, you can freeze berries and then use them all the year round.’