To Market Newsletter Nov Dec 2013

Newsletter What’s

November/December 2013

HOT

As the year draws to a close its always a

good time to review the previous 12 months.

Is your business on track? Have you achieved what you set out to do at the start of 2013?

Hope is a poor strategy and planning for what you want to achieve means that you will have a measure of control and success.

At TM towers we’ve had an exciting period of growth that has meant new systems, implementing new ways of working and some fab new client accounts to work on - you’ll be seeing some of the projects in forthcoming newsletters.

Other developments include a new programme of marketing masterclasses and a brand new 90 day business builder programme. If you’d like to know more about either of these contact us at hello@to-market.co.uk and we’ll put you on the priority notice list. You heard it here first, folks!

Enjoy the festive season and here’s wishing you and yours the very best for 2014.

Jo Sealy

5 Surprising Marketing Trends for 2014 Here’s a peek at what we see coming down the road in terms of small business marketing: Smarter social media The last few years have been all about every business feeling obligated to create a dynamic presence on every social media platform. Instead, we believe 2014 will be the year that small businesses become confident and adept enough at social media integration to pick the specific platforms that make the most sense for their business.

Simplicity will reign supreme There is a sense of overkill from the hyper-connectivity of our highly digitized lives to the bright, flashy, complicated sensory input we’re fed everyday. As a result, 2014 is likely to be a year where the most successful marketing strategies will be ones that are not only simple in nature, but promote goods and services that serve to simplify the consumer’s life, or even just their customer experience. continued on page 3

Design Directions

What makes a great logo design?

There are five golden rules for great logo design, Follow these and you will create an effective and memorable logo.

1. Make it Simple Logos are absolutely everywhere, so you want yours to be easily and quickly recognised, whether it be by driving past a billboard or on a crowded shelf.

2. Make it unique Stay away from over-used graphics and icons, and remember, a logo doesn’t have to say what you do. The Apple logo isn’t a computer.

3. Make it Adaptable Your logo has to translate well across different mediums and keeping to rule one, simplicity, allows for this. A simple logo

www.to-market.co.uk 020 3284 1978

will be just as effective on a business card as on a billboard.

4. Make it appropriate Keep your target audience in mind; your designer should help you choose the appropriate fonts and colours for your target audience.

5. Make it timeless Back to rule one, keeping a logo simple almost automatically makes it timeless.

Your logo will change over the years, but if elements like clean lines and symmetry in the design remain, these will help keep a logo timeless.

For design enquiries contact: tash@to-market.co.uk

Advertising & Marketing for creatives, food and small business

Client Study

Artillery – Appetite Food & Art Festival To Market has worked with Laura Kerry, founder partner of the arts development company Artillery, based in East London on a number of arts related projects.

Laura had an ambitious idea to launch a new borough wide, month long food and art festival in Waltham Forest.

Elphinstone Road have proposed a custard pie Warm, and sunny too we hope, because when we planned Appetite for June it conjured up an image fight of course!

Little people with an appetite for books and cakes in our minds of the great British summer, eating are invited to fairytale tea parties in libraries all over outside, strawberries, salads and beer. When the Waltham Forest. All the family can visit the organic festival was announced we were overwhelmed by food growing cooperative at Hawkwood allotments the response to the invitation to take part. As each in Chingford or help pilot a new café project in event came together we saw that Appetite was goSidmouth park, Leyton which even promises TV and ing to be everything we envisaged it would be. strawberries so you won’t miss the tennis.

Living in London you can experience food from I’ve discovered so many enterprising initiaall around the world. During Appetite you can tives on offer right on our doorstep including; a expect nothing less with the addition of some very butcher’s in Waltham Forest College (where caterindividual ingredients; sample home cooking with many cultural influences, eat in the chef ’s own kitch- ing students will be collaborating with the college art department for Appetite), a craft brewery in ens and gardens, feast as an ancient Greek, Roman Walthamstow and micro dairy in Tottenham. or Tudor would have and be entertained by music, Ironically, being too busy to shop or eat poetry and readings. Over 250 local indimuch while working on Appetite, I’ve viduals and small businesses have been been sustained on a diet of gozleme busy crafting exceptional food and Taste Cuisine (a Turkish pancake) made in the arts events for you to choose from.

From: window of a Turkish bakery in Each an exquisite opportunity to l Palestine l Pakistan St James Street, Walthamstow meet new people and celebrate l Goa l Hungary near to where we work. You with your friends. can explore for yourself on Appetite is served up l Ecuador l China the Walthamstow Food Trail with generous helpings of art l Italy l Sweden or join one of the guided food including illustration, printl Morocco walks though North Chingford making, photography, creative l Waltham Forest and Walthamstow where all the writing and an edible art instalresearch has been done for you. lation. Some events will have fitting Come together at the end and find live musical accompaniment, artist a selection of hand picked local businesses illustrated menus, workshops and an invitaunder one roof; Auntie Maureen has foraged for tion to take part in painting a new mural. Inky Cuttlefish Studios are creating hand printed Appe- artisans, local producers and growers and curated a Gourmet Food Fair. tite merchandise in support of the festival.

The Appetite Festival has been brought to you Organisations and local community food by the very creative people across Waltham Forest projects are raising awareness of their campaigns and a peppering of those from just beyond the by hosting thought-provoking events and engagborders. We hope that you enjoy all that is on offer ing food demonstrations. Whitefield School and throughout the month of June.

Walthamstow School for Girls have been creatively supporting the Eat or Heat project who are l Best wishes from Laura Kerry and the Appetite organising a fete with lashings of cake and an art Team Jo Sealy, Auntie Maureen, Kerrie Ahern auction during Appetite. and John Devolle.

Residents of Elphinstone Road, Walthaml Artillery is an independent artist led organisastow have been inspired by Appetite to host their tion and the creative team behind annual street party in June and have suggested the E17 Art Trail. www.artillery.org.uk everyone bring a special dish to share, from their l Design by John Devolle www.clear-as-mud.co.uk childhood or cultural heritage. The children of

This would involve creating a sponsorship strategy which included sourcing and managing suitable sponsors and devising added value packages for both the sponsors and participants.

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“The success of the first Appetite Festival has been way beyond our expectations!

To Market has worked with us as a partner in every sense and has been important in shaping the format for future Appetite Festivals.”

Laura Kerry, Founding Partner, www.artillery.org.uk

www.to-market.co.uk 020 3284 1978

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Partners:

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Edible Art Doreen Joy Barber takes a look into Sarah Hardy’s curiously consumable world

If you’re hip to the quirky cake-based phenomena in London within the past year, you may have seen an interesting edible piece crafted by Walthamstow’s own Sarah Hardy and not even realized it.

Did you catch the gory chocolate heart at this year’s Anatomical Heart Valentine’s Day Pop-Up? How about the shellshaped spongecake at Tate & Lyle Tasting House in Soho? Or perhaps the grisly murder scene rendered entirely in cake and chocolate to promote the DVD release ofThe Helpers horror film--its decapitated head of orange drizzle cake featuring on the Jonathan Ross show.

Even Hardy’s family fabrications can be cringe-inducing, like the Christmas cake that resembled a raw turkey.

Hardy studied sculpture and spent fifteen years in art and model-making, constructing props for museums, shop windows and television shows prior to starting her career in cake artistry three years ago. With these artistic skill-sets, combined with her unique creativity, Hardy won the Professional Cake Decorating Category at The Cake & Bake Show in 2012, where she met Miss Cakehead, one of the judges and the founder of Eat Your Heart Out, a collective of food artists.

Through this group, Hardy has collaborated with several other artists and bakers, including Chris Verraes of Cake

for Breakfast. With Verraes, she has formed Boy Eats Bug, a soon-to-belaunched cadre of confectionary that will produce an array of chocolate specimens inspired from nature. These fantastic chocolate insects will be on display in Walthamstow’s Vestry House Museum, where the Victorian Parlour transforms into “Darwin’s Parlour,” a delectable homage to the living world. Appetite attendees will be happy to know the chocolate creepy-crawlies will also be available for purchase.

Chocolate is a new material for Hardy as a cake and confection artist and designer, but one she has been quick to master. Working with Eat Your Heart Out, Hardy cites it as “a great way for members to showcase their skills,” enjoying the affiliation with other talented food artists and getting niche technical advice in a pinch: “Oh my God! My vertebra is sticky!!”

Hardy’s fantastic and macabre inventions have attracted a clientele of cake fanciers, including betrothed couples, television personalities and a rock n’ roll legend.

Luckily, you don’t have to get hitched or sneak into a rock star’s shin-dig for a taste of Sarah Hardy’s creativity.

Stunning examples of what Hardy can fabricate with sugar, icing, cake and other edible material can be seen on her website. Much of it features the tiered layers familiar to many a wedding, yet Hardy’s cakes posses more panache and elegance from

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Elements: Sponsorship Strategy, Marketing, Photography To discuss your next marketing campaign call 020 3284 1978 or contact us at hello@to-market.co.uk

(and last year’s tainly wasn’t k in other ways. need an allotm of spare time, I go to the a the rest of the Time ceases to the chimes fro overlooking th looking foxes y bees make hon curl away from And yet I d The waiting li while waiting plot. Many allo muck in. Ther everything nee digging and w willing appren I learned th garden, buildi boards. I rang they had any s they gave me ( load of good o are ideal for ea cause you can ing good quali and then dig o deep (as deep new compost o gradually mix Highlights been potatoes up like buried spinach (if I co vegetable, this ganic greens y effort) and pur traditional allo seen as a delic

l Sarah Hardy: www.sarahhardy.co.uk facebook.com/SarahHardyCakes Boy Eats Bug: boyeatsbug.co.uk

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on-site model-making and propbuilding to an artistic outlet that allowed her to work from home.

She remarked, “My mother ran an antiques business from our home, and that was an early example for me on how a home-based enterprise could work.”

It was an experience she wanted to emulate in her own way with her own family, and as her cakes and confections capture the imaginations of foodies in London and beyond, Sarah Hardy feels lucky to be in her Walthamstow neighbourhood. And Walthamstow is lucky to have her.

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an array of influences outside conventional bridal magazines and mediums. Working closely with her clients, Hardy develops bespoke cake creations for an array of events.

Sarah Hardy’s fascination with and inspiration from the natural world is a reoccurring thread in her work. Her sugarcraft examples include intricate flowers, colourful birds, rotting fruit and insects.

Hardy’s studio is home to a collection of highly detailed drawings of dragonflies and other multi-legged creatures, which she’s drawn from specimens donated by friends and clients. As she told me, musing over a cup of tea, “The dark bits and the light, fluffy bits—it’s all life.”

Hardy has lived in Walthamstow for around eight years, and enthuses it as a place full of creative people “who do things,” as a wellconnected “village” to raise her two children in. Having children prompted Hardy to shift from

you don’t have to get hitched or sneak into a rock star’s shin-dig for a taste of Sarah Hardy’s creativity

2014

“They provided a package of marketing services which included press releases, press lists, social media marketing and photography. Jo and her team also sought out and engaged with key sponsors that would complement the ethos and spirit of the festival and created valued added opportunities for both sponsors and participants alike.”

A huge thanks to everyone who has supported this new venture, all the events organisers and our sponsors.

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“We had an idea to create a brand new, food and art festival in Waltham Forest and knew that we needed to create a team that would help us to deliver such an event. We partnered with To Market to develop our first Appetite Food Festival in June 2013.”

“We’ve worked with To Market on a number of occasions” says Laura “We knew that once we agreed on what needed to be done we could leave them to deliver it.”

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World of Mouth - Social Media With 9,100 Tweets being sent every second, micro-blogging site Twitter is fast becoming THE way to promote your business. Say what you have to say in 140 characters, hit send ….. and your message is out there in the blink of an eye. With business Twitter accounts, make the most of your 160 character profile - try to include your branding in your header image, your user picture or even go the extra mile and have a special TwitBack commissioned to mirror your website, Facebook page, business cards etc.

TOP TIP Use your Tweets to drive traffic to your website, an effective way to grow your database by encouraging your followers to sign up for eBooks, special offers and newsletters.

For social media enquiries email: cheryl@to-market.co.uk

What’s HOT

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5 Surprising Marketing Trends for 2014 Campaign-based marketing will take a break Instead of campaigns that operate around a company-based timeline, wwe think that from here on out, real time marketing, through social media and websites, will be the focus. We are excited to see what inspired strategies come about.

Marketing will be more tied to revenue generation Instead of just measuring lead generation, marketing’s worth to a company will start being weighed against sales growth.

This could entirely change marketing’s key performance indicators, which, ideally, will lead to a more effective marketing department altogether.

Mobile will get its due Last year, more people purchased smartphones than PCs. Seriously.

While it feels like we hear the word “mobile” more than our own names these days, global

“ 2014 will be the year that small businesses become confident and adept enough at social media integration”

November/December 2013 marketers haven’t entirely caught up; 90% of them have a mobile site, but only 20% include mobile strategies as a fully integrated part of their overall marketing plan. If nothing else on this list comes to fruition, count on “mobile” being a bigger, bolder line item on every major marketer’s strategy this year.

In our view...

Telephone Answering Services We’ve investigated a few telephone answering services recently and thought it might be useful to share what we found. There are two basic types of answering services available, and the cost of the service will depend upon the level of service you want to provide to your customers.

Basic Answering Service This level of service is the cheapest and provides the bare essentials of telephone answering services. The agent answers the call with a greeting you provide and will proceed to service the caller. Using your guidelines, the service attendant can triage the incoming calls and decide if you need to be contacted immediately, provide alternate information, or take a message for a return call the next business day.

Advanced Call Services This level of service provides call handling solutions tailor made for your business and the expense can be offset by the additional services that it provides. As with the basic type of service, the call will be answered as if it is one of your own employees.

In addition activities such as order taking, appointment scheduling and customised responses are part of the service.

Pricing Using these kinds of services are surprising competitive, ranging from around 77p per call and upwards. Most services have flexible contracting arrangements so you’re not tied into long term commitments. sunita@to-market.co.uk

Advertising & Marketing for creatives, food and small business

Featured in Print

Texcel Technology

Electronic Manufacturing Solutions

We get to work with some great businesses here at To Market Towers and one part of the service is to tap into journalist contacts to secure editorial for our clients. Here are a couple of recent successes:

Eden Fine Dining

Texcel Technology Plc.

“At Eden Fine Dining we pride ourselves on using quality ingredients so when To Market suggested the opportunity to feature in a specific article on pears we felt it was right for us and decided to go for it. To Market liaised

When the Guardian Small Business Showcase were requesting companies on the theme of efficiency, Texcel – one of the UK’s top electronic manufacturing service companies - immediately came to mind. TM has been working with Texcel for over 4 years and we understand the steps the company has taken to develop and improve the way it works with its clients.

“Jo has encouraged us on a number of occasions to pitch for more editorial work and during this year we have had some great press coverage as a result!”

When Great British Food Magazine contacted us for information on chefs who used UK sourced pears in their dishes, we immediately approached head chef Adrian Collischon.

directly on our behalf with the publication and made it a really straightforward process, dealing with it quickly and efficiently. The resulting article was great - I still get a buzz from seeing our work in print! - exactly the sort of thing we want to be associated with.”

Pear Feature_P&G 19/07/2013 15:29 Page 3

British pears

T

unlike an apple, they need to be ripened at home first.” Indeed, American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson ruminated that 'there are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat' – and it seems many shoppers feel the same.

“If an apple is unripe then they are passable, but unripe pears are basically inedible,” says Joan. “Sadly this has led to the modern perception that all pears are hard and crunchy – it’s shameless!”

While a perfect pear is one that has a slight softness at the stalk and a subtle pear-drop aroma, this delicate balance between just ripe (sweet and juicy) and overripe (mushy and gritty) is something the supermarkets understandably struggle with, particularly when it comes to transporting them.

“Supermarkets like Conference because they can be eaten straight off the tree and in three weeks still be soft and juicy,” says third generation Suffolk pear grower Sophie Wheldon. “It stores well and looks good, so there’s no need for buyers to look at any other varieties.

In many ways, it also comes down to their thirst for ‘perfection’.” Joan agrees.

“Now we can import pears from the northern and southern hemispheres, supermarkets can feasibly have pristine pears all year round, and that soughtafter continuity, so there’s not too much encouragement for farmers to grow pears in Britain.”

heir skins can be golden, flushed pink, green or flecked brown; their flesh meltingly soft and juicy with a flavour redolent of butter, spices and honey; their names are romantic and almost regal: ‘Williams’ Bon Chrétien’, 'Doyenné du Comice', 'Joséphine de Malines’, ‘Louise Bonne of Jersey’ and the supersonic ‘Concorde’.

Homer considered pears the 'gift of the gods', the Tudors a highly prized winter food source, and by the 18th and 19th century every well-to-do homeowner had a stately pear tree growing against their house, or in the kitchen garden. But today, despite there being some 500 varieties of pears at Brogdale’s National Fruit Collection in Kent, most people are more likely to have sampled them from a tin rather than a tree, with the average shopper barely able to put a name to more than one or two varieties.

With up to 80% of our pears imported from abroad – and half of British pear orchards disappearing in the last 40 years – there’s even less chance of eating one from the UK. So how has this muchloved fruit, this proud pome or, as Francois Pierre de la Varenne put it in his Le Cuisinier Francois, the founding text of modern French cuisine: 'the grandfather of the apple, a fallen aristocrat' – go, so…well, pear shaped?

Pear Particulars Like many of our ancient fruits and vegetables, it’s thought pears were brought to Britain by the Romans, but towards the end of the 14th century British gardeners were breeding their own in the shape of the ‘Warden’ pear – mentioned in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale – which became the parent of many UK varieties, and was quickly followed by Black Worcester and William.

“The Black Worcester was a great favourite in Tudor times, when they didn’t have potatoes or pumpkins to see them through the winter as it could store well into March and April,” says Jim Arbury, apple and pear expert at RHS Wisley. “It was even incorporated into the coat of arms of Worcester.” By 1640, thanks in part to breeding by stately home gardeners, some 64 varieties were being grown in the UK, and by the 18th century this had increased to around 600, with revolutionary new breeding techniques in Europe bringing us quality new

Farm & Fortune

varieties – Comice and Conference – that are now the mainstays of modern pear production.

Ripe or Rotten The 1920s and 30s, considered by many to be the ‘pear heyday’, saw production expand into Sussex, Essex, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, with Kent becoming the industry’s heartland.

But within decades our passion for pears had dwindled, and pomologist Dr Joan

Morgan, author of the Book of Apples, who recently turned her unbridled enthusiasm for tree fruit to pears – cataloguing the 500 at Brogdale for a new book – says we no longer know how to handle them.

“Pears are fascinating and incredibly frustrating in equal measure,” says Joan.

“You have to eat them at that exact point of ripeness to enjoy them fully, and people have lost touch with when this is.

They want to eat them immediately but,

“It has become increasingly challenging,” says Sophie, who was handed the reigns of her grandfather’s Wheldon’s Fruit farm in Sudbury 10 years ago, and now grows Conference, Williams, Comice and Merton Pride. “European producers can produce them in larger quantities and much more cheaply.”

Sophie’s father Andrew, now semiretired from the family farm, agrees.

“After the trade barriers were lifted in the 1950s the number of UK fruit growers dropped from around 1,400 to 400,” he says.

Part of the blame lies with the climate. “We’re basically at the geographical limit of tree fruit growing,” adds Andrew. “Which means we have to use costly methods to avoid frost damage and we get lower yields.”

But there are many who are sympathetic to the pear’s plight and are attempting to stem the decline. Since 2011, 19-year-old fruit grower George Mansfield of Mansfield & Son, one of the

Pears are fascinating and incredibly frustrating in equal measure. You have to eat them at that exact point of ripeness to enjoy them fully, and people have lost touch with when this is 48

Pear Feature_P&G 19/07/2013 15:29 Page 4

Pears can live for up to 300 years, so many people end up with pear trees in their gardens and have no idea what they are UK’s largest fruit growers, has been trialling a new ‘Sweet Sensation’ pear that has been bred for its super sweet flavour, blush colour and thinner skin, and is aimed at a younger shopper.

“I grew up living next to my family’s orchards, so I have eaten pears since I was little – stewed, in pies, and fresh from the tree – but unfortunately there hasn’t been a huge amount of innovation and they’ve become a bit of an unloved fruit,” says George. “Sweet Sensation will hopefully do what Pink Lady did for apples, and make more people aware of our country’s great tasting, fresh produce.”

For Jim Arbury at RHS Wisley, heritage pears are the answer and he’s responsible for more than 190 cultivars at the garden, as well as a pear identification service that allows people to send in pear samples so they can be catalogued (he’ll be offering the service at the RHS Taste of Autumn Festival between October 12 and 13).

“Pears can live for up to 300 years, so many people end up with pear trees in their gardens and have no idea what

they are,” says Jim. “It’s really important to continue to preserve these fruits by keeping accurate records, and we also offer propagation material so people can grow them in their own gardens. By preserving the different flavours, one day we might have the right climate to grow them commercially again.”

Chef Know-how Top chef Michel Roux Jr believes consumer pressure is the only way to ensure British pears survive. “If we start to insist on British pears we will be able to invest more in the industry and build new orchards, so our growers can keep going,” he says. “British pears definitely taste better than imported ones; they take longer to ripen, which in my opinion gives them a much better flavour, and they are fantastic for cooking.”

And he’s not alone. West Yorkshire chef Tim Bilton is so potty about pears he’s named his new restaurant, The Spiced Pear, after them, and, along with three dedicated pear dishes on the menu, has dug up the restaurant garden to plant a pear orchard. “People have

been put off pears in the past because they think their skins are tough,” says Tim, whose new orchard has a mix of Beurré Hardy, Onward, Beth and Conference. “But there’s nothing better than a poached pear in my opinion, and the delicate flavour is incomparable.”

With the pear orchard getting established, Tim hopes to make his own perry and, by feeding his pigs with the pear pulp, create a unique flavoured pork. “I think our customers are genuinely surprised when we give them a pear tarte tatin as a starter, or a trio of pear desserts – we’ve even mastered our own pear drop recipe!” he says. “People have forgotten how good they taste.”

Fellow chef Adrian Collischon, who runs Eden Catering in Westminster, uses the firm flesh of Williams for cooking and the softer and juicier Comice for cold dishes and sauces. “A bad eating pear is enough to put most people off but personally I think they’re much maligned,” says Adrian. “I don’t think enough people actually know what to do with a pear and not enough restaurants

are celebrating them.”

With many experts predicting a bumper harvest this year, compared with the dismal numbers in 2012, when poor weather saw harvests reduced by 50%, there’s really no reason not to seek them out. “Apples are in abundance at supermarkets and farmers' markets, but there’s hardly any pears – we need to give them a good kick up the backside and start buying more,” says chef Tim. Joan Morgan agrees. “I’d encourage people to seek out British pears for their unique quality: the buttery flesh, the exotic perfumes of rose water, vanilla, lemon or orange that cannot be matched and should be celebrated.”

Young pear grower Sophie feels honoured to be continuing an ancient traditon. “I feel very proud to be farming pears; we’re a dying breed,” she says. “And if you haven’t yet bitten into a beautiful, fat and juicy pear, and had the lovely, sweet juice run down your chin, you’ve not experienced one of life’s great pleasures!”

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Read the full story in The Guardian here http://www.theguardian.com/small-businessnetwork and search top right for Texcel Technology

www.to-market.co.uk 020 3284 1978

Like to get more press coverage for your business? Call 020 3284 1978 or contact us at hello@to-market.co.uk

Advertising & Marketing for creatives, food and small business