Results from the annual Love Lamb Week campaign (September 1-7) have proved that PGI Welsh Lamb is popular with consumers.
Love Lamb Week is a grassroots initiative started by sheep farmers to highlight their outstanding produce and the 2020 Love Lamb Week campaign focused on emphasising the fantastic nutritional benefits of lamb as well as its unique role in sustainable meat production.
Unable to deliver its usual mix of face-to-face consumer events due to Covid-19 restrictions, the whole focus of HCC’s 2020 Love Lamb Week campaign rested on digital content.
Despite numerous challenges in 2020, sales of PGI Welsh Lamb have grown this year as many turned to cooking during lockdown including younger consumers and families looking for new and exciting recipes to try at home.
The value of lamb sales across Britain in 2020 is 17.4% up on the same period last year, with an 8.4% rise in the number of consumers buying lamb.
Early results proved that digital activities around Love Lamb Week were highly successful resulting in a 172% growth in impressions and a whopping 1,025% growth in video views year on year.
2020 campaign
The 2020 Love Lamb Week campaign saw a wealth of digital content created to entice families and foodies alike to buy, cook and eat Welsh Lamb.
As well as an array of new recipes posted on Facebook and Instagram, the campaign also utilised influencers including a collaboration between Chris Roberts and Black Axe Mangal targeting younger social media savvy foodies.
Further influencers taking part in the 2020 campaign included chef Dean Edwards who created a Kachumber salad with spiced rump of Welsh lamb; John Gregory Smith which created four recipes including lamb kofta hummus bowls; Pippa Payne who created a Greek-style slow-cooked leg of Welsh lamb dish; and TV presenter and chef John Torode who enticed viewers with a crumbled lamb cutlet dish.
According to Rhys Llywelyn, HCC’s marketing manager, “Love Lamb Week is an opportunity to celebrate Wales’ outstanding produce, PGI Welsh Lamb”.
“Love Lamb Week is an excellent opportunity to remind UK consumers of the quality, flexibility and provenance of Welsh lamb.
2020 has been a challenging year for the marketing team at HCC but results such as the Love Lamb Week results show that we are meeting those challenges head on and exceeding expectations.
“We very much hope that those, especially families, who bought Welsh lamb during the lockdown period will continue to experiment with new recipes.”
