TRADE AND MARKETING Europatat focuses on promotion and a worldwide role in the food supply The European potato sector is depressed. The prices in the 2014/2015 season were bad and consumption is under pressure. Good reasons for Europatat to think about the short and long-term perspectives during the annual Europatat Congress in Düsseldorf last May. For the short and medium term the focus is on promotion. For the long term, opportunities are found in the future demand for food throughout the world. ad pricing and the disappointing figures for consumption potatoes were the topic at the annual Europatat Congress. The promotion of potatoes is high on the agenda in a number of European countries. The nearly one hundred registered representatives of the European traders in consumption and seed potatoes were offered ideas in Düsseldorf on tackling promotion. The potato sector could follow the example of the dull, German Opel car. With an eye-catching campaign, marketer Niels Alzen of the German advertising agency Scholz & Friends succeeded in turning Opel’s losing market share round into a growing market share. First, the advertising agency started an anonymous promotion campaign in 2014, to make the German consumer think. With a poster campaign – in bus shelters, for example – the advertising agency aroused curiosity with slogans such as ’18 percent of Germans don’t like olives. 20 percent have never even eaten an olive’. As the source of the advertisement, only the website was mentioned, without a reference to Opel www.umparkenimkopf.de). B Campaign with a wink After arousing curiosity with the approach of looking at things in a different way, the agency started the campaign with Opel as the source. A campaign with the appropriate self-mockery about the dusty old Opel image. ‘Opel motor cars have greatly improved, but the consumer doesn’t yet know it. The Opel brand name acts as a block between the product and the consumer’, Niels Alzen of Scholz & Friends explains to the European potato sector. For setting up and running campaigns, the European potato trade is looking for EU subsidy opportunities. These can mount up to as much as 80 percent of the promotion costs. In a separate meeting at the Europatat Congress in Düsseldorf it became clear that new campaigns should focus on product conceptualisation. Consumers can do without all kinds of detailed information, was the opinion of the meeting, which was chaired by Europatat Secretary Raquel Izquierdo de Santiago. The reasoning behind gearing to conceptualisation is fully in line with the NAO promotion campaign, which is planned and funded by 29 NAO members. In the NAO campaign the video ‘Bird seed’ is central, which focuses on complex super foods. The video closes with a reference to the normal, but very wellknown super food, ‘the potato’. Like Opel, the NAO campaign is a campaign with a wink. Crisps are less fatty The potato concept, with a multitude of fibres, minerals and vitamins, can’t be the problem. The potato has enough potential. Barbara Gallani, Director of the UK Food and Drink Federation, refers to a British report that asserts that about half the human diet should consist of carbohydrates. This conclusion opens up enough opportunity for the potato to grow, because the average Englishman currently gets only 6 percent of his required energy from potatoes. It may be going a bit too far to argue that consumers should eat more crisps. But it’s a striking fact that the processing industry has succeeded in considerably decreasing the fat and salt contents in crisps. Gallani mentioned that the processing industry had decreased the contents of saturated fat in crisps by 80 percent in 2011 compared to 2002. The total fat content dropped by 16 percent. The percentage of salt decreased by 25 percent. Compared to 1993, the salt content even decreased by half. No more arable land in the EU Consumers can do without all kinds of detailed information, was the opinion of the meeting, which was chaired by Europatat Secretary Raquel Izquierdo de Santiago. While in the short term the potato sector has to work hard to find a market for its products, this may be completely different in the long term. For a long-term view, the national organiser 26 Potato World 2015 • number 3 Pagina 25

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