Thousands of colleagues and over 100 sponsors packed out Magazine London in early July for Barcode Festival, one of GroceryAid’s biggest fundraising events.
Early indications were that the event raised £1.3 million, helping the charity continue to provide free and confidential financial, emotional, and practical support to grocery colleagues 24/7, 365 days a year.
Acts included DJ Pete Tong and singer Kelis on the main stage, while Fred Siriex, Em the Nutritionist and Dave Wall were seen on the M&S Food Demo Stage.
Grocery Trader caught up with Mandi Leonard, Welfare Director, GroceryAid to learn more about Barcode and the work of the charity.
What is the purpose of Barcode?
Barcode Festival is one of our fundraising events we run each year. One purpose is to raise awareness and funds for the charity because we are 85% self-funded as an organisation. Another is to give colleagues in the sector an opportunity to network. Lots of businesses use this as their summer party, they use it for rewards and recognition for their teams who have worked really hard during the year to have a great get-together. The third reason is brand activation – we have got 120 brands activating at Barcode who had the opportunity to get their brands out in front of 1,000 retailers in the arena.
How popular was demand for tickets?
It was completely sold out, with a substantial waiting list. That is one of the reasons we are moving next year and going to a larger site, so that we can accommodate more colleagues.
How much money is the festival aiming to raise this year?
We think it is going to raise £1.3 million for the charity, which is phenomenal.
How does that compare to last year?
We were just under £1 million last year.
How can companies build brand awareness at the festival?
By bringing new ideas along, by bringing their brand activation. Most of the brands we deal with go to festivals, have brand activations they do at trade shows. So it’s really about being innovative, bringing brands along that you want to highlight. Don’t forget that brands are not only exhibiting to the retailers but everybody who attends Barcode is a consumer so there are 4,700 people you are showcasing your brand to at the festival.
What kind of work does GroceryAid do?
GroceryAid supports colleagues working in the sector. That is everybody from a manufacturer, supplier, all the way through the distribution chain, wholesalers, logistics, through to the retailer. That can be the largest multiple store or the smallest independent retailer including petrol forecourt stores.
It is super important that we get that message out. The services we provide are practical, emotional and financial support for colleagues across the sector. We provide financial grants for colleagues who meet our criteria, we run a confidential helpline that has access to counsellors 24/7 365 days a year. We also have practical advice on our website and through our telephone information specialists.
If someone worked in a warehouse for Sainsbury’s, how would they know about GroceryAid?
We work really hard with the employers. We have a programme of awareness that we run throughout the year. We work closely with HR teams in all of the big retailers. We encourage them to raise awareness of ourselves through their whole business. We understand getting to someone in the warehouse, getting to those unwired colleagues can be really challenging. Part of our strategy moving forward is how we can connect directly with those colleagues. We are currently looking at improving our presence on social media. Speaking to trade press is a great way of getting our messaging across.
What are the biggest challenges that GroceryAid faces?
Awareness is our number one challenge. We provided over 78,000 incidences of support last year which is absolutely phenomenal, but we work in an industry of 2.6 million people. So, if we can get that awareness out there, if we can get our services promoted to more people who need us in difficult times, then we can really continue what we are doing and enhance what we are doing for colleagues working in the industry today.
What is the most exciting thing about your job?
I love my job. The reason I love my job is every single day a member of my team changes somebody’s life and has an impact. And I get to come to events like Barcode.
What are your plans for Barcode for next year?
We are moving Barcode next year to a greenfield site, it’s going to be bigger, there will be more opportunity for larger activations. The space at the old venue limited the size of the activations we can have. We have some really exciting plans we will be sharing in the coming weeks and months to hopefully encourage more people to come along.
Grocery Trader also spoke to Kieran Hemsworth, GroceryAid CEO about the festival’s plans to expand.
How long have you been at GroceryAid?
I’m getting to the end of my first year, I have done a cycle of our event calendar.
Where did you work previously?
I worked for Unilever, I worked for Coca-Cola for 16 years where I had various roles – I was the VP of marketing for CCUK and then I was the VP of marketing for CCEP across Europe, which was great, fantastic. Then I ran Ginsters, the Cornish pastie company, for 5 years. Who doesn’t love a Cornish pastie? Then I ran PZ Cussons’ UK and Europe business, then I did an MBA, then I got this role.
How are you getting your message across to the people who are going to get funding from GroceryAid? How would someone working in a warehouse for Sainsbury’s hear about GroceryAid?
We have got two target markets. We have got our supporters who support us by running all of our events. I think we are doing a really great job in getting our message across to those people because the events keep on growing year on year, our income keeps on growing from the events. All of the money generated by the events goes straight into the welfare budget so that we can help more people.
The other side of that is how do we get our message out to frontline grocery workers? We did a survey and essentially, we talked to them about the services we offer. We gave them a list of the sorts of people who provide those services and asked them to pick out the ones that they had heard of. Only 18% said they had heard of GroceryAid. So that says to me, while we are doing an amazing job in terms of incidences of support – 78,000 last year – we know we can do an awful lot better if we get our message out to those frontline grocery workers.
The question is how do we do that and for us that’s about positioning GroceryAid so it stands for something in people’s minds in the same way that you would position a consumer brand. We are beginning to work on some emotive creative from that and trying to get that message out through our own channel, which is our websites and social media. We are also getting that out through our supporters’ channels, working with our supporters to make sure we are getting our message out to their people. We are also doing a bit of work on paid media to a small degree so that we can increase that level of awareness. How we can do that is somebody like Meta, who own Facebook actually capture the sector you work in so we can target grocery workers with Instagram or Facebook.
We will do a bit of that so we can grow that awareness number from beyond where it is today at 18%. As we do that, we will help more people.
If someone was a forklift driver for Tesco, would Tesco make them aware of GroceryAid?
Yes, they will do. It will be part of their HR channels of communication that they will get information on GroceryAid. The question is how do you beyond that sort of stuff? We want to get our message out to those people and if we can get into a degree of paid media to do that, but only a small degree because we have got to watch every penny and make sure it goes in the welfare budget.
Barcode Festival is outgrowing its current venue. Where will its new venue be?
As we help more people, there were 78,000 incidences of support last year, that was a growth of 93% on the previous year. There is a big demand for our services but we can only keep pace with it thanks to our supporters bringing us more money. We have got to grow the events we run and we are looking at other areas of funding. Barcode is such a great event and we think it has got even more legs. We want to increase the capacity, the number of people that come along to Barcode. In order to do that, we have outgrown the site we were in, we could only get 4,700 people into there. We are going to go to a completely new greenfield site called Kenwood House, just outside central London. It will have a slightly different vibe to it but we will build our own set, we will build the infrastructure. There will be much more space for brands to be able to activate properly. There will also be much more space for people to have reward and recognition for their team, to bring their team along for a summer party. If people want to do a bit more customer hospitality, bring your customers to that event and then of course you will be activating your brand properly in front of those customers. That is worth so much in that sort of environment. Kenwood House can accommodate up to 8,000 people. Because it is a Greenfield site, there is much more space for activation. We restrict the units that all the brands bring to 120, because of the size we have got. There will be a greater number of units at Kenwood House. We need more brands to come along. It’s a great opportunity.
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