“Food Week” a flop

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32425, 12 October 1970, Page 3

“Food Week” a flop

(DAVID BARBER.

N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent)

SINGAPORE, October 11. New Zealand food promotion efforts in Asia, so successful at Expo 70, flopped badly with a half-hearted, badly-timed and ill-prepared “New Zealand Food Week” in. Singapore.

Despite the presence of six Dairy Board hostesses, cooking demonstrations and New Zealand decorations in Singapore’s four biggest supermarkets, last week’s promotion made virtually no impact in the island republic. “This has done us incalculable harm here,” said one disappointed New Zealander as the week came to an end yesterday. “It would have been much better not to have held the promotion at all.” An official of one of the supermarkets said: “It was purely flag-waving. It may not do you any harm but it’s done absolutely nothing to increase your trade.” The promotion, estimated to have cost about 's6ooo without the Dairy Board girls’ salaries and air fares, flopped because: There is only a small range of New Zealand food available in Singapore at present.

The campaign 'was hurriedly prepared and uncoordinated. It had no support from individual New Zealand exporters, who appear to have known nothing of it.

The six Dairy Board girls and one Meat Board cooking demonstrator were spread over the four supermarkets. For the first two days they worked at off-peak shopping ' times when the stores were virtually deserted. Not one New Zealand exporter offered the supermarkets any price reductions for “New Zealand week” bargains—a standard practice in such promotions. Poor response All these combined to produce a half-hearted response from the supermarkets involved. Officials of all four said in interviews that the promotion raised doubts about the sincerity of New Zealand claims that it hoped to expand food exports to this part of the world. The reaction of the stores was to ignore New Zealand in their regular newspaper advertising, although they featured food week banners outside their premises and carried posters and’other promotional material inside. Other publicity was limited to one half-page advertisement by the New Zealand Government and producer boards in one English and one Chinese newspaper. Store officials drew unfavourable comparisons with similar food weeks held by Australia, Denmark and France, which, they said, were planned at least six months ahead.

They described the New Zealand effort, first mooted in last July, as an apparent “after thought” tp capitalise on the Dairy Board girls’ journey home from Expo. They said long advance planning was necessary to make arrangements with exporters and suppliers for cutprice specials and to ensure adequate stocks of a wide range of foods. Although the Dairy Board is understood to have offered

free butter and cheese for sample testing by customers, none of the stores apparently received any. In most of the supermarkets the only New Zealand foods available were meat, butter, cheese, z milk powder, and reconstituted milk. Some had biscuits, honey, sweets, frozen, vegetables, fruit juice and highpriced, luxury soups. One store official said: “I know you have a wide range of food available,. but there were not enough here to justify a promotion. If you don’t have enough supplies why do you bother having a food week?”