East Coast Bakehouse is the winner of this year’s Love Irish Food Brand Development Award.
East Coast Bakehouse will now receive €70,000 worth of out-of-home advertising space from Exterion Media and an additional €10,000 creative bursary towards the campaign by advertising agency OwensDDB.
The extensive campaign will appear nationally for two weeks across Exterion Media’s PurchasePoints retail portfolio and across their premium digital out-of-home retail network. The package also includes print production and digital animation.
East Coast Bakehouse, which is based in Drogheda and employs 45 people, is the biggest biscuit-making facility in Ireland.
Accepting the Brand Development Award, Alison Cowzer, Co-founder of East Coast Bakehouse, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have won the Love Irish Food Brand Development Award. It’s very important for our brand to be associated with Love Irish Food and the work they do showcasing quality Irish food brands that are made in Ireland.
“We are confident that this award will allow us to reach a broader audience, help influence brand choice and drive sales. This award will also assist us in achieving our aim of encouraging consumers to choose Irish. Each year 99% of biscuits consumed in Ireland are imported, mainly from the UK, so encouraging people to buy Irish is a key objective for us. To date, East Coast Bakehouse has received tremendous support from retailers and our biscuits are now available nationally in grocery stores,” she added.
According to executive director of Love Irish Food Kieran Rumley: “At Love Irish Food, we promote and support Irish manufactured food and drink brands. The Brand Development Award is one of the many initiatives that we are proud of, as it provides the winner with a platform to heighten an awareness of their brand. Throughout the process of selecting a winner for this award we saw huge dedication from all of the shortlisted candidates, including Pro U yogurt and Margaret’s Clonarn Clover eggs. After due consideration of the very strong entries, the judges felt that East Coast Bakehouse was the worthy winner.
“East Coast Bakehouse is the only nationally produced mainstream biscuit brand being distributed in the Irish grocery market. This award will now help create a greater awareness of the East Coast Bakehouse brand and to increase the share of Irish produced biscuits bought in supermarkets throughout Ireland. The award will also greatly assist East Coast Bakehouse establish its position in the national biscuit market which is worth an estimated €360 million each year with almost €7 million of biscuits being imported into the country each week,” he added.
Antoinette O’Callaghan, marketing manager, Exterion Media, adds: “The Brand Development Award is hugely important to us at Exterion Media. It’s a fantastic opportunity for East Coast Bakehouse to step up their brand promotion efforts and leverage that opportunity to grow their consumer awareness. It was clear from their entry, that the team at East Coast Bakehouse has the necessary drive, passion, belief and potential to achieve its business objectives. The Brand Development Award will greatly assist them in achieving those aims. We look forward to seeing the campaign early in 2018.”
