The National Farmers’ Union is putting pounds 250,000 behind its
first advertising campaign in the wake of the Government move last week
to ban beef on-the-bone.
The NFU is spending the money through the Osprey Group before Christmas
to persuade ministers to help members hit by the continuing BSE crisis
and cheap meat imports. It particularly wants the Government to do more
to access a pounds 980 million EU hardship fund, claiming that farmers’
incomes have fallen by 47 per cent this year.
The first burst of ads appeared this Tuesday in papers including the
Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard and focused on the
contribution of farmers to British life. One ad, with the headline: ’Who
cares if Britain’s farmers are under threat? You should’, pointed out
that the industry employs 500,000 people who care for more than 80 per
cent of British land.
It included a coupon for readers to cut out calling on the Government to
’honour its manifesto commitments to look after rural communities’.
Other ads will appear next week, while further spend will depend on the
political response to the campaign. The ads were created by Osprey’s
creative director, Mike Reynolds.
The agency’s development director, Geoffrey Sundquist, said that the
campaign had been put together over the weekend after a surprise phone
call from the NFU president, Sir David Naish. Osprey has worked with the
organisation for the past year on promotional activities.
He added: ’We’ve done fast turnaround ads before for clients but nothing
this complex. We had to get all our facts absolutely right.’
Osprey also handled media buying for the campaign.
