MARKETING
Green
shoots
Selling Irish food abroad should be easy given our lush
landscape, but it does require a considered approach
that takes in local sensibilities, writes Fiona Reddan
F
or a food company, having success in the Irish market is just one
part of the jigsaw. To truly
achieve scale, it has to position itself in international markets. But
this can mean a serious assessment of a
company’s marketing and branding strategy in order to ensure that it is appropriate
for the market the company is looking to
target.
An obvious choice is to play up a company’s Irishness, given the country’s reputation in the agri-food sector. However, as
Tara McCarthy, a director with Bord Bia
says, it all depends on the product you are
selling. A product like Goodfella’s pizza is
not particularly enhanced by being Irish
but Kerrygold butter on the other hand
very much plays up its Irishness.
“It varies quite a lot as to whether or not
consumers assess provenance in that category,” she says.
Moves abroad may also necessitate a
change in branding. When porridge maker
Flahavan’s, for example, started to sell in
the UK, it launched its product in a blue
and red canister. However, competitor
Quaker then contacted the company to
draw its attention to the fact that Fla-
8 |THE IRISH TIMES | March 26, 2014
havan’s product looked too much like
Quaker’s did. So the Irish food company
changed the colouring on its boxes to
green and red.
A vital part of any company’s research before it exports is to consider how the consumer will use the products – what works in
Ireland may not necessarily translate internationally. When Kerry Group, for example, was getting ready to export its cheese
strings product to France, it discovered a
challenge in that French kids don’t take
lunch boxes to school, they use the school
canteen instead.
So the group opted to sell the product as
an after-school snack or gouter instead,
changed its name to Ficello (or string), and
replaced the cheddar content with the
more familiar Emmental. “Y