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In the press: Birds Eye avoids freezing its branding efforts during lockdown

With media already bought for this month, frozen food brand Birds Eye has chosen to create a new and relevant campaign in just 18 days rather than going dark during the current coronavirus outbreak.

Sarah Koppens, UK and Ireland marketing director at Birds Eye, said it was important for the household name to not simply disappear – yet it would have been inappropriate to promote individual products and encourage people to buy more.

Bird’s Eye’s approach chimes with recent advice from media and marketing consultancy Ebiquity, which has found considerable evidence that there are significant rewards to be had for brands that maintain or increase their advertising investment during a crisis.

“Market share performance is related to share of voice,” Christian Polman, chief strategy officer at Ebiquity, told a recent online town hall event convened by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF).

He advised brands to protect their equity by:

Maintaining share of voice

Playing a long-term game

Keeping an eye on short-term strategy

Maintaining adspend

Planning for the recovery 

 

For more read WARC’s report: Why brands that maintain share of voice in a recession will build long-term equity.

Download Ebiquity’s full viewpoint ‘Advertising through a recession’ here.

 

To read the article in full in WARC, please click here.

First featured on 08/04/2020.

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