British Tomato Week: Encouraging Britons to buy British

June 8, 2017 Written by

This year we have been working with the British Tomato Growers’ Association to encourage people to buy British in the lead up to and during its British Tomato Week (22-28 May).

Starting our outreach in January, our strategy involved three main tactics:

1. Inspiring Brits to use British Tomatoes in their cooking: To inspire Brits to cook with locally grown tomatoes during the week, we worked with a top recipe developer and a renowned food photographer to shoot six delicious family friendly recipes using fresh British tomatoes. These recipes were then pitched to newspapers and consumer magazines.
2. Creating a news story: To capture the attention of the national media, we commissioned a survey that looked into people’s attitudes towards buying British produce post-Brexit. We used key news-hooks such as the recent Spanish vegetable crisis in our research to ensure the story felt new and current.
3. Amplifying through social media: After launching a British Tomatoes Instagram account and refreshing the existing Twitter account, we reached out to key social media influencers and companies with large online profiles asking them to get behind the week’s hashtag. We managed to secure #BritishTomatoWeek posts from a number of influential food accounts  – including all the major supermarkets.

Here is our favourite piece of coverage, and the good news is that we’ve heard from our client that British tomato sales are on the up!

ITV This Morning