The good practice presents how the regional food brand, Food Province of South Ostrobothnia, was developed in a pilot project funded under NICHE project.
Regional food brands offer great opportunities for food and drink industry SMEs to enhance visibility and communicate the origin of their products.
In South Ostrobothnia the food sector actors have collaborated to promote the region as the Food Province of Finland for several years and many development activities have been directed to develop the concept. Most activities have however been dependent on project funding and to assure the continuity of the activities the local actors have addressed a need for a concept independent from external funding.
To tackle this Regional Council of Ostrobothnia carried out a pilot project where the regional Food Province brand concept was further developed and made independent. The project had two objectives: 1. updating the brand identity and 2. creation of the operational model. The activities were carried out by external experts. A local core action group played also an important role in the development.
In the first objective the brand identity was updated to be more appealing for consumers both inside and outside the region. The brand identity was developed in close collaboration with the core action group. Two consumer studies were carried out to assure the consumer perspective.
The operational model was created in meetings with the core action group. The key issues here were the creation of the criteria and business model and deciding on the management. In the end one actor took responsibility of the management.
Resources needed
The pilot project budget was 58 000 euros that covered costs for the external experts who took responsibility of the brand development, visual design, consumer studies, update of websites, marketing material creation and operational model development.
Evidence of success
The project was successful that led to the creation of the Food Province Label. The label is now part of the services provided by the Rural Women’s Advisory Organisation.
Two issues were important for the success: 1. Engagement of local actors. Over 25 members took actively part in the project. The core action group included actors from the whole food value chain. 2. Consumer studies. The studies offered very important insights for the brand development and how it is seen outside the region.
Difficulties encountered
Deciding on the operational model and the ownership of the brand was certainly the hardest part in the project. It was not easy to find a common solution on how the brand should be managed and who would take the responsibility. And solving this required more time that was planned.
Potential for learning or transfer
The project is an example of how a region can start building up a regional food brand. There are some specific points that should be mentioned here:
1. Engagement of stakeholders: Regional food brands should be developed in close collaboration with local stakeholders. It is important to engage actors widely from all over the food value chain.
2. Consumer studies. With the two consumer studies (one qualitative and one quantitative) carried out by the external expert a plenty of important information and aspects for the brand development was received. There were few cases along the way where the opinions between the stakeholders and consumers were opposite and the stakeholders had to rethink their opinions.
The project was constructed so that both these matters (stakeholder engagement and consumer perspective) contemplated each other.
The operational model with the criteria could also be of interest for other regions.
Please login to see the expert opinion of this good practice.
Tags: Good practice, Pilot action, Regional, SME, Stakeholders
