Love Irish Food, in partnership with Exterion Media has announced details of this year’s Brand Development Award.
To date, and including this years’ award investment, Love Irish Food will have invested a total of €1m in media and creative content to support Irish food brands – making it the biggest national food award in the Irish food industry.
The 2018 Brand Development Award, provides brands that carry the Love Irish Food logo with the opportunity to win €75,000 in advertising space, scheduled across Exterion Media’s retail portfolio and retail digital network. The extensive out-of-home campaign will appear nationally for two weeks and includes print production and digital animation. Additionally, Owens DDB Advertising Agency will provide the winner with up to a €10,000 creative bursary to create and develop the Outdoor advertising campaign.
The award provides Love Irish Food member brands, who support over 15,000 jobs in the Irish food industry, with the chance to win a fully funded national advertising campaign from Exterion Media and with a runner up receiving a business to business featured profile in Checkout magazine.
The Brand Development Award was launched by Love Irish Food in 2012 at a time when Ireland and its food industry was under threat with unemployment at 15% and up to 70,000 people emigrating per annum. The award was established to help locally produced brands establish and distinguish themselves in the Irish market.
Love Irish Food and Exterion Media will work closely with the winning brand to plan a campaign that will optimise their business objectives.
Kieran Rumley, Executive Director, Love Irish Food said: “The Love Irish Food Brand Development award is the largest Irish food industry award of its kind. At a time when Brexit has added much uncertainty to the market, the award allows the winner the certainty of knowing that they have an advertising campaign for their brand in their plans for 2019, a critical year for Ireland’s food industry. We at Love Irish Food are very proud of this award which helps promote and support an Irish manufactured food and drink brand. The award will provide Irish SME brand producers with the opportunity to advertise to Irish consumers on a national level, giving them a huge opportunity to connect with their target audience and build their brand.”
Antoinette O’Callaghan, Marketing Manager, Exterion Media added: “Over the last number of years this award has demonstrated the efficacy of advertising in driving both brand awareness and sales. This is a fantastic opportunity for a small Irish brand to step up their brand promotion efforts and leverage that opportunity to grow their consumer awareness. We look forward to working with the winning brand to maximise the opportunity this award presents.”
East Coast Bakehouse was the winner of the Brand Development Award 2017, Alison Cowzer of East Coast Bakehouse, said: “The award has given a significant boost to our brand performance.The trade really embraced the opportunity in winning the award, which allowed us to co-ordinate promotional activity nationally across all accounts. We also achieved enhanced additional distribution, particularly down-trade which has positioned us for strong brand growth. I would encourage all Love Irish Food members to enter to be in with a chance of winning this great award.”
The competition is a simple two phase process. To enter, brands must register at http://www.loveirishfood.ie before Friday 28th September. The second phase involves a completed submission to be submitted by 5.30pm Friday 2nd November, 2018. The judging panel comprises of Kieran Rumley, Executive Director, Love Irish Food; Antoinette O’Callaghan, Marketing Manager, Exterion Media and Barry Dooley, Chief Executive, Association of Advertisers in Ireland. A shortlist of competitors will then be interviewed by the judging panel with the winner announced on November 26th 2018.
