Bulgarian Cheese

Industrie-Contact AG / PRGN, Hamburg / Germany, 8.06.2011

Jak wypromować bułgarskie przysmaki i sery w Niemczech? Odpowiedź jest prosta – nawiązać współpracę z należącą do sieci PRGN agencją IC PR z Hamburga.

Intro

Germany is a saturated market for food and beverages. Therefore it is extremely difficult to enter this market from scratch. Nevertheless the Bulgarian Association of Milk Processors started a campaign financed with aid from the European Union and the Republic of Bulgaria to introduce the Bulgarian cheeses Sirene (white cheese of cow´s, cheep´s or goat´s milk) and Kashkaval (a yellow hard cheese) to the German market. But do the Germans need Bulgarian cheese? The project really bore a challenge. Bulgarian cheese was unknown to German consumers and products only were available in a Bulgarian online shop managed from Berlin at this time. In addition, for the first event in Hamburg we had only three weeks for the whole organization.

The task was to launch Bulgarian cheese by organizing promotional and press events in different German cities. The most important objectives were to increase awareness for Bulgarian cheese, motivate the demand of wholesalers, retail and final consumers and raise sales in Germany. For the start of the campaign three cities were chosen: Hamburg, Cologne and Munich. The attending guests (expected 50 persons per event) should result in a good mixture of the most important members of the target groups (opinion leaders, journalists of trade and consumer media, representatives of consumer organizations, professionals, importers, distributors, wholesalers).

Strategy

The first hurdle to clear: Convince the client that a high standard culinary school is a better choice for a tasting event than a four-star hotel (too boring!). After this topic was settled to the satisfaction of both parties, we choose three culinary schools, which were central, full of atmosphere and really popular in Germany at present.

Additional to the locations we assigned three chefs to create six typical Bulgarian recipes. We told them that they have to prepare the food in the traditional way, but we also gave them the chance to pep it up with their own ideas. That was really amazing! Afterwards we had three completely different interpretations, although every chef got the same recipes from us. Last but not least we decided to work together with the Bulgarian Embassy and Consulates to benefit from a Bulgarian network in Germany (wholesalers, retail, journalists, etc.), which has already existed.

In terms of communication work we bet on the appeal of novelty to arouse peoples curiosity for Bulgaria and its products. We mostly worked with very inviting messages like “Bulgaria surprises with culinary enjoyments”, “Did you ever taste Sirene and Kashkaval?” or “Have you ever tried Bulgarian cuisine?”. Most of the journalists, especially from the food or travel departments were grateful, as the Bulgarian topic was nearly untouched.

Results

• Instead of 150 persons 200 guests took part in the three events
  • Important food journalists
  • Importers of dairy products
  • Food experts of the association of German nutritionists
  • Bulgarian Communities
• Significant print and online coverage across the country
• Video on Youtube about the Cologne event

Event images: bulgaria.ic-gruppe.com
Video on Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knrn-ndkL9A
Further information about IC: www.ic-gruppe.com

source: IC PR, PRGN member from Germany