'Love Lamb Week' is set to make a return in September in a bid to promote British lamb by encouraging the public to try the meat in different ways.
Next month sees the start of the annual initiative celebrating lamb’s flavour and versatility, with the UK's red meat levy boards spearheading activities.
The campaign’s main aim is to promote the ways that lamb can be enjoyed, ranging from simple weeknight dinners through to traditional Sunday roasts.
It will include a range of promotions, from farm-gate banners and magazine and newspaper advertising, to retailer and butcher promotional packs and social media influencers providing recipes.
Participating levy boards and campaign collaborators will be using a distinctive campaign logo, digital assets and toolkit to ensure high impact messaging about the benefits of lamb.
Rob Duncan, Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) assistant brand manager, added: "Lamb is such a versatile and high-quality product with so many different cuts to discover – it absolutely deserves the recognition that we aim to provide with this campaign.
“The dedicated campaign branding, toolkit and digital assets included in the pack shared with industry will mean we can achieve widespread consistent messaging, gaining maximum impact across all marketing channels.”
Each levy board will be celebrating the campaign with focussed activity: In England, AHDB will feature half a million ‘Make it Lamb’ stickers on British lamb packs across five major retailers.
It will run social media advertisements on the @SimplyBeefandLamb Instagram and Facebook channels featuring well-known foodie influencers.
Advertisements will also appear in national print press. Promotional kits containing recipe leaflets, sticker sheets, posters and children’s activity sheets will be mailed to about 1,500 subscribed butchers and farm shops.
The NFU will be supporting the campaign with sheep farmers from the iconic upland areas and rolling English lowlands highlighting the importance sheep play in shaping the nation’s landscape.
In Scotland, QMS will have a Scotch Lamb focus on its industry facing and consumer facing (Make it Scotch) social media channels, and will be working with social media influencers to promote Scotch Lamb.
In Wales, Hybu Cig Cymru – Meat Promotion Wales (HCC) will run a digital advertising campaign, including promotions on channels ITV Wales and S4C.
A PR consumer campaign about lamb’s versatility working with diverse media outlets will also be undertaken, and the campaign will engage with parent influencers to showcase the versatility of Welsh Lamb, including on the Instagram page @pgiwelshlamb .
A focus will also be placed on how it plays an important nutritional part in children’s diets, providing inspiration for back-to-school meals. In addition, details will also be shared through HCC’s education newsletter.
And in Northern Ireland, Livestock & Meat Commission (LMC) will be launching its schools programme with a focus on lamb, as well as working with influencers on social media and developing accompanying radio activity.
The commission will also be hosting retailer sampling events in collaboration with industry stakeholders which will facilitate conversation with consumers and provide insight to the farm-to-fork supply chain of Farm Quality Assured lamb.
