Bord Bia’s 2020 campaigns for Irish beef in Italy
E-commerce and home delivery is quickly becoming an essential service for the food industry. Already outlined as a growth area in the Fuller Lives Bord Bia Consumer Lifestyle trends, online delivery is now more important than ever to consumers. In Italy, e-commerce platforms are growing exponentially, with a recent study showing over 1.3 million new consumers have registered on online platforms since the beginning of the Italian Covid-19 lockdown, a leap forward of 10 years in online purchasing growth (Italia Oggi).
Like many other businesses, Bord Bia Italy has adapted to these new circumstances, by expanding its digital presence, and trying to reach and support consumers in their purchasing choices and habits. With the closure of many foodservice establishments at the beginning of the lockdown period, we launched a 3-week campaign over March-April focused on Irish beef, specifically steak cuts, to support the sector, and provide important information to consumers. With the recent environment increasing the need to cook at home and stay healthy, the campaign positioned Irish Beef as a premium and naturally healthy meal option.
For this campaign, we collaborated with two leading Italian influencers, who each run high-quality, food and lifestyle Instagram pages Conosco un Posto, and Non Solo Food with a total of over 180,000 highly engaged followers between them. The goal of the campaign was to promote Irish beef to consumers as a naturally healthy option, and to provide them with points of purchase for Irish beef by offering the critical home delivery option, important information with the recent changes in the retail and foodservice sectors. To measure the effectiveness of our campaign we collaborated with the Italian butcher market through top Italian butcher, Macelleria Pellegrini. As with many other retailers and food establishments, Macelleria Pellegrini has had to adapt their business to the current environment and, during lockdown, he was offering a successful home delivery service clocking up over 250 daily deliveries. They were able to deliver a personalized package to the influencers containing a selection of Irish steak cuts. Both influencers chose recipes to create unique dishes, and brought their followers through the process, explaining the benefits and quality of Irish beef.
We saw positive results from this campaign, with a total of 483,866 impressions from the posts and stories published by the influencers. There was a large increase in traffic and interactions with Bord Bia’s owned assets, the Irishbeef.it website, and the Irish_Beef Instagram page, with a total of over 4,000 profile visits and 500 new followers attributable to the campaign. The campaign proved very effective not only in creating awareness for Irish beef but equally generating sales. Our partner Macelleria Pellegrini reported a fivefold increase in their sales of Irish beef, and saw high levels of engagement with their social media platforms throughout the campaign.
After the success of this campaign, Bord Bia Italy is now launching an expanded campaign from June onwards that will see us working with 7 Italian influencers who have a total of over 1 million followers, to provide Italian consumers with information on where and why to purchase Irish beef and lamb. The extended campaign will also coincide with other promotional activities around Irish beef taking place in the market, one example being a “Buona per Natura” on-pack sticker promotion, in collaboration with a major retail group with over 350 outlets in the South of Italy. To further raise the profile of Irish beef in the South of Italy, we are collaborating with the influencer Licia Sangermano, who will provide her audience with specific visual information on where they can buy Irish beef, highlight its important characteristics, and how best to cook the product.
Sources:
Bord Bia Consumer Lifestyle Trends https://www.bordbiaconsumerlifestyletrends.ie/trends/