Campaign shortlisted for top marketing award

A Quality Meat Scotland campaign that helped turn Scotch Beef into London’s biggest meat brand has been shortlisted for a major industry award.

The ‘Great Quality of Life, Great Quality of Taste’ campaign, which was developed with The Union and has also been used in Scotland, has been shortlisted in the ‘Public Sector - Other services’ category in the Marketing Excellence Awards, organised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

The Marketing Excellence Awards is one of the pre-eminent events in the sector, the winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on 23 February 2012.

Suzie Carlaw, Marketing Controller for QMS said: “It’s great news that we’ve been shortlisted for such a major award and it is testament to the quality of the campaign and the work that went into it.”

“Despite there being near universal brand recognition in Scotland, independent research showed that prior to the campaign about a third of London shoppers were aware of the Scotch Beef brand. Sales of Scotch Beef were also fairly static as the economic climate chilled.

“We needed to reinvigorate the Scotch Beef brand on a modest budget, and through listening to consumers we were able to make minor adaptions to the existing creative to better reflect what they wanted. The new campaign saw Scotch Beef become the best known red meat brand in London, brand awareness reached its highest ever level, and sales increased 30% in late 2010.”

The core target for the campaign was women aged 35+ who are the main food-shopper of the family. The campaign was based around point-of-sale posters, commuter Underground posters, quality newspaper magazines and online adverts on recipe sites such as Delia Online and BBC Good Food.

Suzie explained: “The campaign had three aspects. It featured cattle in a natural environment with a farmer highlighting animal welfare and had an enticing cooked steak shot. The copy focused on the high quality taste and animal welfare offered by our assurance schemes.

“Working with Mediacom we picked outdoor formats which allowed for a longer dwell time, such as 48-sheet London Underground cross-tracks and magazine inserts to enable us to highlight brand heritage and bring the story to life.”

Between 2009 and 2010 brand awareness in London increased from 29% to 40%, the highest ever recorded in that market.

Suzie said: “Listening to consumers meant that our existing creative could be adapted in a cost effective way, which ultimately resulted in a stronger and more relevant consumer brand.”