British Summer Fruits

Shout! Communications promoted industry body British Summer Fruits with their campaign around winter productivity in the workplace. The campaign warned of the dangers of ‘winter brain’, with over half of British workers admitting they feel less productive in the winter months according to new research.

Shout! Communications supported Red Brick Road and their client British Summer Fruits, an industry body which represents the producers of 98% of berries supplied to UK supermarkets, with a radio day talking about winter productivity.

The Project

The aim was to shed light on the changes our bodies go through during winter, while offering tips on how to best combat them. Overall, the campaign set out to encourage Brits to eat healthier and turn to fruits such as berries to get their energy in winter, rather than sugary biscuits or crisps.

New research by the industry body found British workers are a lot less productive at work in the colder months. The findings were in line with a related neuroscience study conducted in Belgium, which revealed brain activity may follow a similar pattern to Seasonal Affective Disorder, or winter blues.

The research cited issues such as darker days, colder temperatures, bad weather and general lower energy levels in the top 5 reasons as to why productivity may drop in winter.

What We Did

Shout! Communications was tasked with securing national and regional radio coverage for the campaign. The media relations team worked hard for over a week aiming to get the best possible coverage for British Summer Fruits.

We were pitching two spokespeople for the story – food psychologist Dr Christy Fergusson and the Chairman of British Summer Fruits, Laurence Olins.

Challenges

Although the research provided some good talking points the campaign did have its challenges. Broadcasters were concerned about the commercial branding and the fact they were talking about summer fruit in mid-winter. Although we were tasked with getting coverage on local as well as national radio there were no regional spokespeople or case studies; this was a particular deterrent for BBC stations.

Another issue was that the broadcast embargo was broken by online/print coverage and several stories appeared online before the radio day.

Outcome

For this campaign, we secured 17 pieces of coverage in total. This included Sky News Radio, one regional BBC station and several commercial radio stations, reaching more than 4.3 million listeners in total.

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