Talks and Waffle

This week has been a fairly interesting one for the dying embers of November, as previously noted we had snow, a good 6 inches of the fluffy stuff AND we had customers, braving ice roads and snow drifts just to fulfill the craving for ice cream! Wonderful!

Last night saw me speaking in front of a group of farmers as part of the Fresh Start initiative. The meeting was held at Bishop Burton College and l was the third speaker of the evening. Up to date, all the talks l have given have been fairly informal, usually at food shows, the WI or local young farmers clubs, format being rather jolly with some bits of waffle followed by samples. 'Do you do PowerPoint' the organizer asked, 'er no but l can,' was my reply. So last night there l was clutching my memory stick containing all sorts of file back ups plus my slide show! People who know me are aware that l do enjoy a bit of a giggle, so my presentation was set up to keep the audience entertained, well that at least was the theory.

The previous speaker, Philip Halhead from Norbreck Genetics was pretty good, covering many aspects of marketing that l had hoped to include in my spiel. It was really interesting to see another farm branding and marketing their product in a similar way to ourselves, despite the fact that the goods were poles apart, so to speak! Things like brand, price, customer service, using the media were all flagged up by the speaker.

I was last to take the floor, only woman in front of a bunch of about 50 farmers, which included our bank manager, [it was he who had invited me to speak incidentally]. My plan of attack had been to briefly discuss how and why we had turned the core business from dairy farming to ice cream manufacture and to make sure that no one fell asleep during my 15 minutes of fame, had mr moo in person shooting onto the screen from all directions as each slide made its entry. It certainly made the audience laugh, where was the little bugger coming from next, and boy did they remember our product!

Enthusiasm and brand image - l think l put that across?