Navigating the Seasons
Lessons in Brand Building from The Happy Pear

“Like the seasons, some days are sunny in business, and some days it rains”.

Stephen of The Happy Pear tells the audience at Dublin Food Chain’s event “Brand Building Tools for the Food Sector” that in order to really embrace running a business and building a brand, you need to take the bad days with the good. In his words, running The Happy Pear “is an absolute b*itch but [he] totally adores it”. A refreshing thought.

The same seasonality applies to marketing your brand across social media. Some days you’re popular, some days you’re not. Because of this, Stephen implores brand owners to find your focus, stay true to your brand and your audience, and to create meaningful engagement online and offline.

Best tips for this? He has a few that we echo.

Creativity is Free!

Working to create content that works across your chosen platforms is a matter of planning cleverly. Stephen is a self-admitted busy fool, previously creating content for all different platforms separately. Working to unify his content creation strategy, he encouraged the room of small business owners to do the same. His measurement of success? It varies, but the motivation he gives his social media manager?
Do art that you’re proud of, and the rest doesn’t matter.

Always be Useful Online

A big driver across Instagram now is no longer comments and likes, but how many saves and shares your posts get. This means diving into the creative process and focusing on dialogue with your audience, engagement with people who follow you, and cultivating a sense of togetherness. Being real online creates a sense of vulnerability that cultivates a great sense of community in personality-led brands like The Happy Pear. Giving value and being useful to your target audience is what will create the strongest impression, helping your brand to more truly resonate with them.

Brand Storytelling Wins

As a food producer, you have endless ideas and products you think of on a regular basis, but which ones do you pursue? How can you be sure that this is the product to bring you success? Truth is, you can’t know. Stephen enthusiastically told the room of business owners to fail and fail again. It’s not about only picking the right product to put on shelf, but about trying and failing, and trying again. What always wins? Authentic and real storytelling – bringing your brand story to life on shelf and online, and keeping it consistent and recognisable across both.

At Bradley, we believe in building brands with purpose. Key to building a strong brand, one that gets consumers engaged, is to create a strong and lasting emotional connection with the consumer you are targeting. We achieve this by focusing on communicating the ‘benefits’ of your offer rather than the ‘functional’ features of your product. We build brands that drive business forward.

Bradley stay ahead of the game and keep watch on purchasing habits, mindsets, and influences. And we share! We’re providing you with meaningful insights that matter. Keep up to date on Bradley Insights across our social media channels.