Food and beverage PR is no longer a little-known secret of FMCG marketing. Long gone are the days of cheesy infomercials and TV jingles that stay in your head for decades…#ILikeAeroplaneJelly.
These days, marketing your food and beverage products has extended to a wide range of activities, and thanks to its diversity and frequent addition of new product SKUs, it enables you to have an impact across various mediums and forms of the marketing mix.
However, today we will be exploring Food & Beverage PR specifically – what this looks like, how it works and why you should consider adding it to your marketing suite for your FMCG products.
What is Food & Beverage PR:
PR uses earned media mentions to help drive consideration for products and services, within a targeted audience. Food & Beverage PR then, uses traditional public relations tactics to drive consideration for your products and to place them in relevant media stories where your target audience are sitting. For some brands, this could mean inclusion in a round-up of the best Gins in the market, or a full review of your latest gluten-free cookie range in a women’s magazine.
In a highly cluttered market, the whole point of Food & Beverage PR is to drive consideration amongst shoppers; so that next time someone is looking for a product within your category, your brand stands out.
How does Food PR Work?
At Agent99 we’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of household food brands including Leggo’s, San Remo and Old El Paso across various product launches – all with the end goal of seeking media coverage that will drive consideration and purchasing amongst audiences.
However, when it comes to using PR to get your brand out to market, it’s important to note that this doesn’t have to just be a standard press release. There are a range of great ways you can share your food products, and this includes product reviews with journalists/influencers, recipe creation, ambassador partnerships and general product placement – either in media outlets, or through giveaways and partnerships with like-minded brands.
How does Beverage PR work?
Alcohol and beverage brands do come under certain marketing/PR guidelines, however that doesn’t mean you still can’t have an impact through PR. Similarly, to Food PR, working with beverage brands allows you to follow a similar process whereby you share the product in the market through product placement opportunities, reviews and giftings.
The important difference (and advantage) here is that many publications do have writers that specifically write/review drinks and alcoholic products, meaning that you have the opportunity get in front of someone who truly knows the landscape and will give you an honest review of your product.
What’s the best way to secure PR for Food & Beverage?
As discussed, there are more ways to secure PR for FMCG products than simply issuing a press release. Other great ways to secure PR includes events and trialling opportunities. At Agent99 we recommend that our FMCG brands do host some form of tasting event or trialling opportunity, as this is a great way to get product onto lips and let the product speak for itself. We have found that by providing products to journalists and influencers, this helps us build more rapport with them, leads to stronger pieces of coverage, and also gives us the opportunity to build life-long brand fans.
Some other great ideas including cooking/mixing masterclasses whereby you show media and consumers how to make certain recipes or cocktails, partnering with an expert chef or bartender to help create unique pairings or recipes for your product, doing influencer send outs or even just product giveaways and pop-up opportunities.
Over the next few weeks of this series, we’ll be exploring why Food & Beverage PR matters, how to get started and what avenues exist to help you promote your products. If you are nervous about getting started and don’t know how to sell the idea into your wide team, drop us a line at the Agent99 team and we’d be more than happy to help you on your journey.
By Agent Emilie
