Getting The Word Out

With my science and engineering background I have an instinctive distrust of all things marketing. “Marketing bollocks” was what we software engineers not-so-affectionately termed any literature that tried to hype up a technology with exciting-sounding words. Remember WAP? It was the first attempt to bring the internet to mobile phones, back in the early 2000's. “Surf the mobile super-highway!” crowed the adverts, as a cool surfer dude swooshed past. Then we all tried to do it on our Nokias and our Ericssons, and it was awful.

Hawthorn flowers have opened

However I am enough of a non-nerd to recognise the fact that a bit of marketing is often necessary to encourage people to spend their money on your product. They've got to know it exists, to start with. They then have to understand why and how their life will be improved if they purchase. This is normally where the sinister wiles of the marketeers begin to work their dark magic. Of course they don't explain how their particular deodorant will make a man smell different, a nicer smell than he would otherwise emit. (Maybe they would if Smell-o-vision ever took off.) No, they hint very heavily that he will have sex with lots of attractive women.

Blueberry flowers

Of course marketing does not have to be like that and often isn't. The marketing budget for my New Leaf vegetable products is constrained but nevertheless I know I have to get out there and try to get people to buy my stuff, without the help of bill boards, TV adverts or social media (apart from this blog I suppose!) Apart from what I sell to the box scheme, the rest I have to find my own customers.

Loganberry flower

So off I slog on my bike to the local hostelries to speak to the managers. The Red Lion, a couple of miles away, is a friendly village pub and the owner-manager Geraint* turned out to be open to buying salads and possibly some other veg. He serves good value pub grub so would not be the target market for, say, kale or asparagus. The Dolbrodmaeth hotel I passed by as I already have an agreement with the managers there, they will take a weekly box of whatever I can rustle up.

Buttercup

So onto the Brigands Inn, just a mile from my land. Every year there seems to be a new manager there. I hadn't met this one before but he was very keen to buy local produce, and to try to make the place more for local people rather than relying on the vagaries of the tourist trade. It's more of a gastropub than the others and I am led to believe the food is extremely good. I hope they made a nice rhubarb pie out of the rhubarb I sold them later that afternoon.

I may still go door-to-door to garner more custom, though last year that didn't result in many actual sales. If I go in the evenings I'll catch more people in and be able to persuade them by sheer force of logic that they are in dire need of fresh locally-grown leaves. Let's fill this rural district with lettuce!

The first jostaberries on their way

* not his real name