English Provender Company, the condiment, chutney, dressings and sauce manufacturer, is investing £1.5m in creating a new brand for its ingredients range to meet demand from the revival in home cooking.
The stand alone brand will be called Very Lazy, the name currently used as a label descriptor of English Provender’s ingredients products and instantly understood by consumers, who are eating 238m more in-home meals than a year ago*.
The new Very Lazy brand, currently comprising chopped and paste variants of jar garlic, chilli and ginger, will be backed by record through-the-line investment, which will land in the New Year.
Says Mark Bosworth, Marketing Controller: “We are clear that the trade requires strong, well-supported brands and with this, our largest ever campaign, we are putting our money where our mouth is, to prove we are serious players in our categories.”
The company is committing £1.5m over three years to convey the new Very Lazy proposition to customers and consumers. Bold new pack designs are being backed by an ambitious creative built around “the world’s fastest human chopper”, Lazlo Vaslavsky.
TV and cinema advertising kicks off in the first week of January, along with a 48-sheet outdoor poster campaign.
Says Bosworth: “Lazlo will bring life and humour to the tedious task of chopping and preparing ingredients, and he will become very real to our audience. There are a number of different creative executions including 40 second and 10 second TV and cinema adverts, plus a webfilm, which all capture his unique style and humour. Lazlo has the potential to become something of a cult figure and we have built a full programme of marketing and PR support around him.”
Initial focus will be on the established Very Lazy range of chopped and paste ingredients, but plans are already well advanced to extend the range and packaging formats from early 2010.
Says Bosworth: “The investment we are making drives current products but it is also very firmly aimed at establishing Very Lazy as a convenience brand for time and skills-poor cooks who still want to serve great food.”
The other key benefit of the brand split is to allow the English Provender Company brand the ability to focus on the “Englishness” of its core products.
“Many of these are traditional condiments and chutneys, all traditionally made to our unique recipes with increasingly rare open-pan preserving techniques, which makes them special. We are all about delivering a taste of England. We have also revised the English Provender brand logo to give greater prominence to the word ‘English’ on the label.”
He adds: “It is clear that all brands are having to earn their right to survive in the current retail environment and this activity is our response to that challenge. Now is the time for us to be investing in our English Provender Company and Very Lazy brands and we have bold ambitions for them. There is a clear and specific brand promise behind each, and we are investing for the longer term to ensure they both will become brands of stature.”
*TNS, June 2009
English Provender Company
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