Channel 4’s Taste festival
In our quest to find new insights for clients and identify new consumer trends we recently attended Channel 4’s Taste festival in Birmingham.
Channel 4 with its leadership in food programming, through the likes of the multiple-award winning Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares has moved from the screen to organising a series of festivals held in city centre parks this summer.
Taste is interesting because it has been created to serve the needs of the growing ‘foodie’ subculture in the UK. In an area dominated by the Good Food Show, Taste is aiming at a more affluent consumer. Think Waitrose and Duchy Originals buyers and you have a great sense of the type of people at Taste. Although comparatively niche at the moment the huge growth in organic foods and ‘finest’ food ranges at your local supermarket shows how this ‘foodie’ niche is becoming very mainstream, very quickly so is of real interest to marketeers.
The idea of marketing through ‘experience’ was alive and well at Taste with a number of exhibitors introducing truly interactive and entertaining exhibition stands. Similar to a trade show, anyone paying the £12 entrance fee could also attend seminars on choosing wines, what makes a fine lager (Leffe only it seems) to selecting the right cheese to follow the fish course.
Taste was one of the best examples we’ve seen of experience marketing. The majority of stands were restaurants who had set up small kitchens at the back and chairs to the front. For a small fee their head chef would talk you through a set of ingredients and then cook you a mini meal to demonstrate the skills of the restaurant. This was all pretty high-end but the idea of getting the customer involved, sparking their imagination and traditional product sampling were very effective in getting tables booked for dinner.
Consumers increasingly filter marketing and demand more than simple information or a promise they look for enjoyment and connection at an emotional level. Experience marketing works on those emotions and so is highly effective in ultimately changing brand perception and buying habits, you’ll sell more. Even if you don’t cook food for your customers you may have a factory that could run tours for potential new distributors, a new service offering that customers can trial or simply give some advice in an entertaining or interesting way.
As Taste shows getting customers involved in what you offer and telling them something new and useful is a powerful way to market your product more effectively.
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