New potato favourite the Jersey Royal will celebrate its 125th anniversary this year with a £1.2m marketing campaign that includes TV advertising.
The ads will focus on ‘Beautiful Jersey and the Grower’ and will feature one of the island’s farmers. The 10- and 20-second executions, which will be filmed shortly, will air between April and June on terrestrial channels.
A PR campaign running alongside the advertising will highlight Jersey’s heritage in a bid to distinguish its potatoes from other new potatoes in an increasingly crowded market.
Rival varieties, such as Charlotte, are well known among consumers now, while widespread planting in Spain
and other warm countries means new potatoes are available year-round.
Jersey island’s director of marketing, David de Carteret, said that in awareness polls 95% of consumers named Jersey
Royals when asked about new potatoes, while 60% had bought them in the most recent season.
Some 70% of shoppers believed the Jersey Royal was a better quality potato with more flavour than its competitors. De Carteret added: “There has been an influx of rival products but we are confident our fans will continue to buy Jersey Royals for their premium taste and quality. The crop is progressing well as a result of mild weather.”
Jersey Royal Potato Marketing, which markets 75% of Jersey’s potato crop, said it would be talking to retailers about how they used the Jersey Royal brand logo in-store. Marketing director John Neal said: “Some have used it, others have not, but using it more effectively could benefit everybody.”
Last year, Jersey’s entire new potato crop was sold through JRPM. This year, however, a group of growers has decided to go its own way and has formed Jersey Quality Produce to market its crop.
Richard Clarke