The UK Fruit & Vegetable Awards 2018
We have entered the UK Fruit & Vegetable Awards for our marketing campaign “Watercress: The Super Salad“ under the category of Marketing or Digital Initiative of the Year. If you are an Fresh Produce Journal subscriber it would be fantastic if you could support us by voting for us here
Building on the “Not Just a Bit on the Side” watercress campaign, we have created a new health and fitness direction for watercress this year with a new strapline; Watercress, the Super Salad. Our research into compounds found in watercress helped us deliver a marketing strategy to promote watercress to a wider market. These attributes include natural nitrates, reducing blood pressure and improving sports performance, to DNA-protecting isothiocyanates improving chemoprevention and most recently a study into watercress and epigenetics with Northumbria University. As a company it is important to support local events so in 2018 we were principle sponsors for 2018 Dorchester Marathon, Puddletown Plod Half Marathon and Alresford 10K, serving up thousands of watercress smoothies to runners on the finish lines!
In addition to initiatives promoting fitness, we also encouraging children to eat a healthy diet through farm/education visits. This year we have worked with fit2cook on the 'Growing Together’ project. 230+ children visited our farms to learn how watercress is grown, growing their own and encouraging healthy eating. Our smoothies were a huge hit and have since been taken to a Dorset school where they will form part of our digital marketing video campaign.
As well as providing free watercress for the hospital restaurants, our smoothie project with the NHS in Dorset County Hospital has delivered more than 9,000 free watercress smoothies for the oncology department patients since Nov 2016. We are now looking at joint marketing initiatives further afield with NHS support.
