In a presentation at the recent Bread & Jam event, we shared our experience on making trade marketing spend effective for FMCG brands. In this blog post, we share some of those thoughts.

Trade spend is crucial for getting products onto retailers’ shelves and into shoppers’ baskets and for cementing the relationship with your category buyer. The primary goal for most brands is to grow penetration – which, simply put, is achieved by making your brand easy to think of, easy to find, easy to buy and easy to use (from “How Brands Grow” Byron Sharp, 2016). Trade marketing has a role to play in several of these stages, and so should be considered strategically.

I have a copy writer friend who is developing a cohort based group training course across 6 weeks or so to help small brands who might be on a tight budget to perfect their brand copywriting skills.

If you think this might be of interest, send me a DM and I’ll put you in touch - she’s scoping it at the moment and you’d have a chance to shape it to be EXACTLY what you need!

We had some great chats with other food & drink founders at the Bread & Jam event and as a result have set up a WhatsApp group to share opportunities and challenges - if you fancy joining in, click the button….

This group is for brand marketers and founders of brands who are looking to scale. I’ve no idea how to define that in a more helpful way, but I think we know what we mean. It’s an informal, safe and welcoming space where we can share challenges, frustrations and hopefully the odd useful suggestion.

Unless you have some answers to some fairly fundamental questions. Because without solid thinking you’ll be wasting your money.

A wise man once told me, “Measure twice, cut once.” This is as applicable to a brand’s marketing strategy as it is to building a kitchen cupboard.

This means investing the right amount of time upfront to make your marketing efficient and effective. Ensuring that every penny spent and every minute of effort is pulling your brand in the right direction. That time is not inertia or a distraction from your day-to-day tasks; it’s about improving your chances of success with the right plan.

If you’re a scaling brand who has managed to secure a listing in one of the major retailers you can sit back and relax. Wrong, your work has only just started.

Recently, I was lucky to catch up with Laura Morris, Head of Brand research at Trinity McQueen, a behaviour led, insight consultancy. She’s worked in research and insight for the past 20 years. Mostly in agencies but she’s also worked client-side at Nestle. Her work spans numerous clients across many sectors, but they all see the benefit of working with insight to tackle their marketing challenges.

She’s obviously an advocate of using agencies like Trinity McQueen, but in this interview she gives some pragmatic research ideas for scaling brands who don’t have large budgets along with some things that larger brands can learn from smaller, more agile brands.

We also chatted about the power of a RACI document, and when scaling brands should consider long term brand building marketing.

I’ve been invited to speak at MAD//Fest again this year. This time around lunchtime on day 1. I'll be talking about being bold without the B.S. - how to get cut through whilst staying on brand.

If you don't have a ticket, then I have a couple of guest passes - open this blog to find out more….

The popularity of Asian food in the UK is undeniable. The UK's supermarket shelves are increasingly stocked with Asian food products, signalling a growing consumer interest in exploring authentic flavours beyond the Westernised versions of Asian dishes. For example, a recent article in The Grocer highlighted the growing interest in Korean food in the UK, highlighting the potential for supermarkets to elevate their offerings from "basic to boss level" by incorporating more authentic and diverse Korean products. This sentiment is echoed across other Asian cuisines as well, where there's a clear appetite for authenticity.

However, bridging the cultural and culinary divide requires more than just importing products from Asia. It involves a nuanced understanding of British consumer expectations and a thoughtful adaptation of product presentation and marketing strategies to resonate with local audiences.

Many of the Asian brands I saw at IFE face challenges in packaging and branding. They are inpenetrable to the mainstream British consumer, and (I believe) don’t resonate with British consumers. Local marketing plays a crucial role in guiding these brands through market adaptation, ensuring products are both authentic to their roots and appealing to the British market.

A couple of freebies for the BBD subscribers to let you focus on your actual marketing work!

In this blog I spoke to Tom Ollerton, founder of Automated Creative about the lessons that established and scaling brands can learn from each other including a way for brands to increase the value of their media by c17%, and tips on how to build agility into the way you operate.

But whilst I was at IFE 2024, I took the opportunity to have a good old nosey around the brands that were exhibiting.

I’m happy to report that the gastronomic landscape was as vibrant and diverse as ever. From traditional dairy powerhouses to the almost overwhelming of Asian suppliers, the event was a testament to how eclectic our eating habits are. Here are a couple of the themes that caught my eye….

We’ve known for some time that there’s a multiplicative effect of using multiple comms channels – and we know that TV is *always* the go to channel if you can afford it (and the production cost of the assets). But recent reserach from Professor Mark Ritson gives us guidance on how to allocate budget.

…and remember when the folks over at Radiocentre & Ebiquity showed how us marketers had been underestimating the power of radio?

Despite our love affair with all things digital, it turns out we'd been underestimating one of the oldest players in the game: radio. That's right, radio. Flying under the radar, delivering results that make other media sit up and take notice.

This month we have the brilliant Ollie Ratcliffe chatting to us about his time at Yorkshire Tea, what big brands can learn from small brands, and the time he jacked it all in to run the socials for Cafe Mambo in Ibiza. Whilst Ollie was at Yorkshire Tea they had an incredible track record of striking gold over and over again with their social media.