Cognosis Consulting
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Breakfast Briefing Output
"Challenging sales and marketing conventions - the Dorset Cereals story"
13th July 2010, London
At our last breakfast, which we co-hosted with BBA International, we considered how you can challenge the traditional sales and marketing conventions. Peter Farquhar, Managing Director of Dorset cereals was our guest speaker on this occasion and provided us with an engaging account of his journey at Dorset Cereals.
Guest Speaker Presentation
Peter joined Dorset Cereals as Managing Director in 2005, after working with Coca-Cola and Powwow Water where he was faced with slowing sales growth a lack of new consumers and no wider distribution opportunities. Since then he has lead the transformation of the company from a traditional manufacturer into a stylish, super-premium brand. He managed to turn a classic “producer led” discovery brand into a consumer brand competing with multinationals. The results spoke for themselves with market share trebling within a year and the company continues to thrive.
Peter’s strategy was to take the best bits of the old strategy and radically rework the rest. Their approach to marketing broke many of the existing category rules and emphasized the importance of real innovation. The relationship with the consumers was central to the marketing strategy and a website that communicates their brand values and engages consumers was the main enabler of this. The results spoke for themselves with market share trebling within a year and the company continues to thrive.
Guest Quotes
“How refreshing in the corporate world to hear real passion, belief in doing the right things, throwing out slavery to process and replacing it with full immersion in getting things done ahead of paralysis from over analysis; principals that have equally driven a similar growth story for Bibendum”.
Richard Cochrane, Off-trade Director Bibendum
“Cognosis breakfast meetings are always high quality, though-provoking events, but I found the short, punchy talk by Peter Farquar about the rise to fame of the Dorset Cereal Brand, refreshing and very helpful. Like Peter, I left a big Corporation to co-found a start up premium food business, and I found his insights into developing a close relationship with consumers and leaving some of the Corporate rules behind, could be applied to equally well to brands as established as Coke or as new as Peter's Yard. Thanks for a very interesting morning.”
Wendy Wilson-Bett, Founder of Peter’s Yard
For further information on future events please contact marketing@cognosis.co.uk
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