Strategy and Planning Assignment 1

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1 Strategy and Planning Assignment 1 INSECTS Aaron Leong Gabrielle Cork

2 CREATIVE BRIEF CLIENT: DEFRA, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs PRODUCT / SERVICE: Around the world insects are eaten in vast quantities except in the UK. BUSINESS OBJECTIVE: Getting British people to be open minded to trying foods with insects. TARGET MARKET: This target market is just learning to make their own independent buying decisions. They are likely to have left home for college or university and are learning to feed themselves. This is the time when they really consider what they put on their plate. This same group seeks adventure and foreign experiences. They are open to alternate lifestyles and are willing to give them a go. STRATEGY: By getting people to understand how commonplace eating insects is around the world. PROPOSITION: Have What They re Having. TONE OF VOICE: Informative, Challenging, Mocking DESIRED CONSUMER RESPONSE: I never thought about eating bugs before but i will try them. SUPPORT: It s a widely unusual and different experience unlike anything they ve been accustomed to. It is actually tasty. It is good for you and the environment. It is part of a global experience. 80% of the world consumes insects. The west is actually a minority in the world where people perceive edible insects as gross. There is a wide variety of edible insects. COMPETITION: The meat industry MANDATORY: DEFRA logo. MEDIA REQUIREMENT: Posters University campuses, University bus stops, train stations and supermarkets near unis/ colleges Online ads Page 1 of 8

3 RATIONALE/REPORT The culture of eating insects has never been part of the mainstream in the west, instead it exists mainly on the internet. Food blogs which promote the eating of insects often provide resources such as nutritional and environmental benefits as well as recipes and how to acquire insects. A small handful of businesses in the UK already operate to serve up insects to consumers. These include businesses such as Bug Grub, Eat Grub, and Crunchy Critters. All of these operate online and serve up products such as ready packed insects and cricket flour. However, there isn t much available in terms of real world stores which have such similar offerings. To start our research, we conducted informal interviews with people in different demographics. We spoke to some vegans and vegetarians to find out how eating insects would compare to meat ethically and what made them give up meat in the first place. Generally, they gave up meat because they did not agree with the cruelty suffered by the animals and the environmental toll it took on the planet. Though most said they would not stop being vegan to eat insects, they may have considered it as an alternative when they were starting to give up animal products. We found that the nutritional value of insects is actually pretty comparable to foods such as beef. In fact, they are often far more nutritious. For example, a kilo of beef has 256 grams of protein and a kilo of crickets contain 205 grams of protein. Crickets also contain omega-3, magnesium, calcium, zinc. So with all these nutrients packed in, crickets are a great alternative to meat. With further research we found that there many environmental benefits to eating insects. Livestock takes up a huge amount of resources. It takes 2,900 gallons of water, 25 pounds of feed and 1,345 square feet of land to produce a pound of beef. The same amount of insects can be farmed with 1 gallon of water, 2 pounds of feed and 134 square feet. They also produce 100 times fewer greenhouse gasses Personally, one of us has tried eating insects. Specifically, tarantulas. There was a little bit of apprehension before eating it, but once you get over the idea of it potentially being bad for you, it becomes just like any other crunchy snack. That first bite definitely made the biggest change in the perception of insects as a food. As it made me realise that that ick factor was all in my head and that my apprehension was irrational. Here in the UK, the reasons that people find the idea of eating insects to be so foreign is because there isn t an established insect eating culture here. However, such a situation is only specific to the western word. In reality over two billion people in the world eat insects as part of their diet. These two billion make up over 80% of the world s countries. The number of edible insect species far exceeds that of current animal protein sources. In fact, there are over 1900 edible insect species, many of which are already common in the diets of people in various countries. We find that people who have not had the opportunity to try insects for themselves are quick to dismiss the idea of it being anywhere close to their mouths. The reasons for this is because they cannot phantom a reason why anyone would eat insects, when in fact millions around the world already do. As such we feel the need to educate people about how commonplace eating insects is around the world in order to break through existing stigmas against it. This would make our objective not to get people to immediately eat insects, but to get people to take the first step in being open minded about the idea of eating insects. All of our research influenced our chosen target audience. We decided to market towards students aged 18-24, as people in that age group are likely to be open minded to trying unusual foods and are actively seeking out adventurous and cultural experiences. These people would have left home recently and be starting to cook for themselves regularly for the first time. They are likely to have a limited disposable income, which will make them susceptible to cheaper food options. Page 2 of 8

4 In order to convince people to eat insects we decided to demonstrate that people in various places around the world eat them too and it isn t that big a deal. What s common is that people do eat insects, what s not is actually refraining from eating them. We decided to use Have What They're Having as our proposition. It appeals to our target market as it positions insects as a common food that most of the world are already eating. If such a vast number of people are doing it, it can't be too bad. The proposition invites people to be a part of a global experience, which links to the target audience love of new experiences. People think of eating insects as something one might do while travelling or on holiday, this takes that foreign experience and makes it available to everyone. In order to get our message across, we decided that it should first challenge our audience to question their food choices. Secondly we felt that it should be mocking, so as to provoke an emotional response. Lastly it should be informative so that it can get the interest of our audiences while educating them. After seeing our ads, we would like for the consumer to start to think of insects as an option for meals. Currently, British people see insects as pests and would not consider them as food except as a I m A Celebrity-esque challenge while abroad. We hope to change this mindset into a more positive one. As part of our campaign we would release a series of print ads. These ads would showcase different insect dishes from around the world. These images would be accompanied by text highlighting the dishes country of origin while also mocking the audiences possible food choices in relation to that country. These ads play on our audience s love of ethnic foods, provoking them to think about how common it is to eat insects around the world. These ads would be placed in targeted areas such as campus bus stops, as well as supermarkets where insects are being sold. A second execution of this campaign is a series of short online ads. Our target market is far more likely to watch things online than live TV, e.g. YouTube videos and catch up. Many of these mediums allow you to skip an ad after five seconds and so we want to get the message across in that limited amount of time. One ad would show barbequed grasshoppers in a Chinese take away box. A pair of chopsticks would enter the shot, pick up a grasshopper and leave the frame followed by an audible crunch. A voice over would ask What are you having, Chow Mein? in disgust. Another ad would follow the same format but with worms in a crisp packet and ask What re you having, crisps? We felt that there is a need for a physical way for people to try insects as currently the most convenient way would be to go and buy them online. So in addition to the advertising materials we would have vending machines installed in various locations. These vending machines would stock a variety of insects which come in different flavours specific to their country of origin. The key feature of these vending machines would be that it dispenses these insects for free. This would lower the barrier for our audiences to try insects for themselves. The vending machine also plays on the instant gratification that our target market seeks. Giving them the option to try it themselves gives them the opportunity to change their mindset on insects and lets them consider insects as something edible rather than just a creepy crawly. Overall we feel that our brief has been well influenced by the research we have conducted. And that our campaign follows the brief. The campaign should be effective because we feel that it suits our target market well and could get them to eat insects or at the very least be more open minded towards it. Page 3 of 8

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