Digital Communications

Summary: Covid-19 restrictions called for a change of tack for Food Savvy communications. On the ground events and installations were put on hold while we rolled out a programme of digital engagement.

• Web content on making the most of a shop or what’s already in the home • Where to store things to make them last longer and making the most of your freezer • Savvy ingredient swaps • Meal planning and batch cooking to reduce waste and time spent in the kitchen • New ways to use tired ingredients such as pasta and eggs • Getting kids cooking and reducing waste • Cook-alongs with local chefs • Fakeaways – home-made-food-saving take out • Competitions for adults and kids

Our primary audiences were young people and families but we also sought to reach anyone whose food habits were open to change during the pandemic.

Web content was supported with a suite of social media assets. We collected these assets into an open source folder and shared with over 350 organisations within the Food Savvy network, actively encouraging them to use the assets to help local householders make the most of their food in a difficult time. These assets were also broadcast from council channels.

Key campaign partners such as the East of England Co-op promoted the messages via their channels.

We also amplified Food Savvy messaging through the use of targeted promoted ads on Facebook. Ads were targeted at households within the large towns within Norfolk and Suffolk. A second set of ads focused on people within these areas with kids.

Of the 3,341 visitors to the website during this period, 19% were local (compared to 13% annually). 47% of the total annual visits to the site occurred during this period.

A note on local visitation: In the first year of Food Savvy, 20% of website visitors were local. In the autumn of 2019 we set up Google ads campaigns to drive traffic to the website. Whilst ads were set up to target a local audience, we saw an increase in both local and national visitors to the website.

Average time spent on the Food Savvy website rose from one minute to one minute 30 seconds.

The pages that attracted the most visits include: Main meal recipes, the main Food Savvy tips page, the Delicious Drawing competition and a blog on tackling fussy eating.

During this period we greatly increased the number of people coming to the site from social media. Dec 2018-March 2020 2.75%, April 2020-August 2020 15.45%.

In the three months from April – July, 632 tweets and 224 Instagram posts were shared with #FoodSavvy. These account for 39% of the tweets in the nine month period from Sept, and 48% of the Instagram posts.*

257 individuals engaged on social media. Over 41% of the annual social media engagement in 3 months.*

3,300,000 Twitter timeline deliveries account for 39% of the total reach (8,500,000). 499,38 impressions account for 55% of the total reach (910,000). We can see that concerted efforts on social media increased our

The digital campaign, Food Savvy Facebook Live events and Delicious Drawings competition (see below) collectively generated 19 pieces of local media coverage with total Opportunities To See amounting to 1.9 million.

Emma Crowhurst, a Suffolk chef leading Food Savvy live sessions was hosted on BBC Radio Suffolk Lynn News Evening Star (Ipswich, print), Anglian Daily Times (Essex, print) Babergh Mid Suffolk (Web) Suffolk County Council (Web) Ipswich Star (Web) East Anglian Daily Times (Web) KL.FM

*33% would be the average benchmark

I find the website engaging and informative. From my use of the site, I wouldn’t recommend any change, though I could possibly explore it more and more often to be better informed. and aim to become more food savvy.

Advertise, let more people know you exist

It’s a great campaign, I can’t think of anything to improve it sorry!

It’s great, just need more time to look at everything. Its great to get others to look for themselves waste, the money waste and how simple it is to save both (rather than nagging!)

The website is so full of useful and practical information so I can’t see how that can be improved. Is this information going to schools? If children are on board, they will, hopefully, be able to get their parents involved so that it becomes a family responsibility and see the impact of food

I think that they are doing a pretty good job and provide good advice to people who aren’t very organised with their shopping and meal planning.

Keep sending the newsletter - thanks

More content for those living alone and vegetarians Greater visibility in schools, food banks and supermarkets More workshops, quizzes and giveaways Information on a ‘planetary diet’ - eating foods which help us to stay within planetary guidelines, and packaging reduction More information on what to do with small amounts of waste, how to recycle oil and how to preserve food Local food share schemes

Summary: Food Savvy hosted ten cook-alongs with local and national top chefs. Each session had a fresh food waste angle. 30,000 reached, 644 people commented on posts and 208 watched live. The live sessions now sit on the Food Savvy website to be watched again.

Presenter Maria Broadbent, Local Chef Natalie Coleman, former Masterchef winner Emma Crowhurst, Local Chef Tom Hunt, Celebrity Eco-Chef Nena Foster, Natural Chef Claire Tolliday, Suffolk Master Composter

Jenny Dawson, Food Waste Entrepeneur

Mark Breen, Hubbub Chef

Beth Thomas, MasterChef Finalist Nicole Freeman, Chef from The Kid’s Kitchen Date 14/05/2020

30/04/2020

08/04/2020 07/05/2020 21/05/2020

13/06/2020

24/06/2020

08/07/2020

12/08/2020

19/08/2020 Theme Sustainable dinners for under a tenner Good Food on a budget & Food Saving Making your food go further Eating for Pleasure, People and Planet Cooking with kids and plant based

Home Composting demo

Quick Pickle

Eating seasonally, made easy

Eating root to shoot

Savoury rolls that save leftovers.

Events are ranked in order of the number of minutes viewed by July. Those early in the programming have the greatest likelihood of ranking highly.

Emma Crowhust received the greatest number of views on the day due to promotion.

Learning: Overall the ‘Lives’ have more engagement than pre-recorded videos uploaded to the Food Savvy partner’s Facebook pages. They offer a great way to interact with our audience and allow for a two-way conversation, which is lost on platforms such as YouTube.

Sessions with plenty of props and cooking were popular. Focusing on a specific framing helped with engagement, such as ‘pickling’ or ‘vegbox reveal.’ Ensuring that there was a network ready to share the sessions pre and post broadcast was key to high viewership.

While Facebook does not provide data on the number of local viewers, the live sessions were promoted extensively within Norfolk and Suffolk and the comments lead us to believe that the majority of the live viewers were local.

Three of the hosts were local which also helped to engage a local audience. A fourth local host was scheduled to run a session on wormeries which unfortunately had to be postponed. A number more local chefs were asked to partake but did not feel comfortable. Moving forward we need to build more contact with local chefs and food personalities who are skilling when it comes to ‘chopping and chatting’ and feel comfortable with the Facebook Live format. Organisations such as Aldeburgh Food Festival have offered to help circulate the opportunity in the year ahead.

to come up with food saving ideas to keep food from the bin. The winner and runner up’s designs were showcased in local East Of England Co-op stores across Norfolk and Suffolk. Winners Amy Cawley from Kings Lynn and Jacob Brough from Ipswich received a £100 East of England vouchers, a cooking set, a personalised apron and a recipe book.

Reach: Running from May – June the Delicious Drawings competition achieved:

85 entries 16 pieces in local media, with opportunities to see or hear 1.7 million Mentions on BBC Radio Suffolk and in newspapers, Ipswich Star, East Anglian Daily Times 10K plus unique visitors to the FoodSavvy website

“ Finn remembered “ his poster and took his advice this morning at breakfast, only taking My daughter enjoyed drawing a vision of a hero fridge freezer pitted against “ a small amount of an Evil Bin complete with cereal rather than fruit in danger of a binning “ taking too much then leaving it! ” and bottles waiting to be recycled! ” Thank you for filling some time for us in lockdown and focused around such an important issue too “ ” “ ” We have made some very nice pancakes and cookies from the cookery book!

Winner, Amy Cawley, Kings Lynn, Age 10

“ Amy is grinning from ear to ear and keeps saying that she can’t believe that she has won! Thank you so much for letting us know and for giving Amy the opportunity to have a purpose for drawing and creating; something she loves doing. She can’t believe that her picture is going to become a real poster!

Winner, Jacob Brough, Ipswich, Age 11

Learning: We are pleased with the level of engagement the Delicious Drawings competition received. Engaging schools, local press and competition listing sites helped a simple activity to have great reach.

Access to Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils’ wide network of schools meant we could distribute information about the competition away from social media, which at the time was becoming increasingly busy with messages.

Previous engagement with schools had involved a Food Savvy handbook which teachers and educators could take inspiration from, including lesson plans and recipes. However, due to Covid-19 restrictions and school closures, we reviewed our approach and decided on a light touch approach to communicating the key messages.

“ Niall O’Keeffe, East of England Co-op joint CEO, said It has been great to have been involved with something so positive with

Food Savvy, especially during the coronavirus lock down. The competition entries were all so innovative and varied it was incredibly hard to whittle them down but we somehow managed it and we are looking forward to having the winners’ posters up in their local stores. ”

Despite the unprecedented changes to how to we live, brought by Covid-19, the crisis has accelerated our learning and experience of delivering campaign strands online, trialing new platforms, and testing engagement ideas for new audiences.

Taking the time to tune into the changing needs of households was instrumental to the digital campaign’s success, as was our ability to respond quickly with relevant content.

Explore content themes with immediate appeal for householders, but which have more covert food saving messaging. For example, cooking with kids, working with what’s already in your cupboard, quick dishes with eggs. Hone our social media strategy and direct greater resource to content creation, message testing and targeted ads. Offer timely free content to local partners in order to build future relationships.Build out the Food Savvy website and improve existing content and structure. Forge relations with local chefs and amplifiers.

We stopped using Google Ads in May 2020. This has led to a decrease in the total traffic to the website but not a decrease in local traffic. We retained local audience visitation by increasing our local social media activity.

We now have a great deal of timely content ready to be further promoted in the year ahead. We also need to continue to identify fitting content amplification partners and strengthen relationships with existing partners to ensure that our content reaches local groups, including those without digital access.

Activities such as the Delicious Drawings competition led to spikes in the website traffic and further competitions and promotions will be used within the year ahead.