As we enter into our new fiscal – we are poised for one of our most challenging and biggest business years yet in SOILL’s history. The challenge ahead of marketing and sales is to sell a substantially larger canola crop than in 2020 – and to find the best, most profitable channels to sell the product in.
The marketing and merchandising teams have done extensive planning and had many strategic sessions to establish how we will tackle this challenging year. From a marketing standpoint there will be a shift from radio advertising to television advertising, with the goal being to get consumers more familiar visually with our brand and products. We’ve partnered with high-level advertising strategists and media planners to assist us with refining the direction that we want to take with our B-well brand and we are heading into a very exciting era of branding and advertising.
From a merchandising perspective, the challenge is two-fold: get our national ranged distribution to 90% so that our products and brands are available everywhere that they should be. Secondly, be aggressive in stores by gaining extra shelf space and attacking our competitors on the ground level. In retail, we are battling against many competitors who are all fighting for the same bit of prime shelf space. Retail is a very fast-paced and competitive world to be doing business in, especially when it comes to commodity-type products like ours. We are continuing to build our relationship with our national agent, Meridian, and they have committed to our brands. We aim to be one of their top 5 principles by the end of 2021.
I have expanded the merchandising team by employing a new merchandising supervisor that will focus on the inland area. We welcomed Leon de Klerk to the team.
We will only succeed this year if we all give our 135% and really pull together as a team.
I’m looking forward to a very successful year and growing the business in leaps and bounds.
#JustCrushIt
HIGHLIGHTS FROM PR
Mishkah Hosts A Webinar
Our very own Mishkah Gool from the B-well kitchen had a webinar focusing on healthy eating in light of National Healthy Lifestyle Awareness Month (March 2021). This day symbolises the importance of tackling obesity, an unhealthy diet and physical inactivity factors which promote poor health as well as poor food choices, common factors facing various communities.
B-well EVOO Campaign
Along with the EVOO campaign PR has launched the product message across our platform to our influencers, launch packs were sent to the Key Account Managers and various media partners.
B-well’s Increased Media Presence
We had a great interview on Gagasi FM introducing the Cooking for Kids Cookbook and all the yummy recipes for all to try. The interview was done telephonically with PR Officer, Nadia Norodien, on their cooking show on Wednesday 24th February at 11:30 am. You can listen to it here
HIGHLIGHTS FROM DIGITAL MARKETING
Launch of the Cooking for Kids Cookbook
2021 is a year that started with hope for a better situation after the happenings of 2020, so we as B-well decided to help our consumers better feed the younger generation. The KIDS! We launched the Cooking for Kids Cookbook that gives parents an array of easy, delicious and nutritious recipes which are better for their children.
We had over 12 000 downloads for our cookbook so far in 2021.
#BwellBeExtra with our EVOO Campaign
We recently launched our EVOO campaign, #BwellBeExtra which encourages consumers to share why and how B-well Extra Virgin Olive Oil adds ‘extra’ to their lives. This gives us a sense of the people that are using the product and how they are enjoying it.
We also launched an exciting competition alongside it to get consumers excited. They can win a premium olive oil hamper which includes the range of our EVOO products.
Meet the Team: Marcelle Liebenberg
We recently welcomed a new addition to the marketing team, Marcelle Liebenberg has joined SOILL as the new Videographer/Editor.
Be sure to give him a big SOILL family welcome.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM DESIGN
Packaging Design
New Flavoured Mayo: Design Motivation
The idea was to slowly transition into the cleaner look and we thought that the trio of flavoured mayos would be our best canvas. We moved away from the clear label and instead went with a white buff (white background). In doing this the red, lime green, brown and the illustrations pop off the label. Everything now looks fresher, more inviting and screams pick me up.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM MERCHANDISING
Meet the Team: Leon De Klerk
We would like to give a warm welcome to Leon de Klerk that recently joined our team.
Leon is coming with vast experience in merchandising and his knowledge will add a lot of depth to our team. Leon will focus on the inland region and we are confident that we will see a significant change over the next few months.
New Listings
Over the past 2 months, we have listed these 3 new products. The products were first rolled out in all Pick n Pay stores and are now also being listed in Checkers and Spar stores.
• Our Extra Virgin Olive Oil 500ml PET is a smaller pack size compared to our 1L to allow us to compete in a broader market.
• For the Grapeseed 1L we changed the pack size from 750ml to have a competitive edge with the other competitors in the market.
• Lastly our new and exciting brand was launched to give us a more premium edge in the market; African Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil 1L is packed in a glass bottle and only bottled with local olives to support our local farmers.
