A media campaign for National Chip Week 2006 has boosted consumer sales and brought a 50-fold return on investment, according to the British Potato Council (BPC).
The campaign, which spanned TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, achieved coverage equivalent to an advertising cost of £2.8 million, says the BPC.
But the promotion only totalled £54,000, around 36p/ha for the grower or 0.16p/t for the purchaser. This represents a 50-fold return on levy investment.
Kathryn Race, head of marketing at the BPC, sad: “The campaign is about getting chips talked about and at the front of the consumers’ minds, so we are also delighted by final results showing a 133 per cent increase in awareness.
“This is equivalent to 2,66 million more main shoppers thinking positively about chips.
Up to 800 chip shops backing the promtion saw a 60 per cent rise in sales during Chip Week, and 45 per cent recorded sustained sales increase in the period since the mid-February event.
“Chips account for nearly a third of potato consumption and one in ten potatoes goes into chip shops alone, so it’s very important to keep making Chip Week bigger and better each year,” said Race.
“All the more so because chips attract a lot of misinformation, and if this goes unchallenged, it can also rub off on potatoes as a whole.”
More young people are aware of Chip Week after they were targeted with chip-themed games via email, according to the BPC. This demographic are most open to rival carbohydrates such as rice and pasta.
Race added: “To the public, Chip Week is all about fun. To the industry it’s all about setting the record straight and achieving a very tangible return on investment.”