Like most men I know, I’m not heavily into fashion. Find a style you like and stick with it until your wife tells you different.
That’s my approach. What I do like, though, is the way fashion sells itself, how it tells a story. All that “trench coats are the new LBD”, or “Alien chic is back” stuff.*
I mean, in less creative hands, it could read: “This Autumn/Winter we have more clothes to sell. We’ve got dresses! And tops! And coats to keep you warm!” But that’s hardly going to set the world alight.
In a cyclical business that follows the seasons, you’ve got to find a way to get people excited about what is fundamentally the same old same old, and the fashion world could teach the food world a thing or two in this regard.
Asparagus, Jersey royals, olive harvests, Seville oranges – these are the hardy perennials of the seasonal calendar and it’s not enough, if you are charged with promoting any aspect of them, to send out an email announcing their arrival. We know. It happens every year.
Try to think of a way of injecting a new angle, to make it different from the previous seasons. It may be by tying produce in with an of-the-moment chef’s recipes, by focusing on new uses or varieties or – and this is the most nakedly fashion-orientated pitch – by making a case for the products new found fashionability. Sales figures are good, but some kind of celebrity association is even better. If you tell me that watercress has become the go-to snack among supermodels, I’m much more likely to listen.
Not least because I can illustrate the piece with a picture of Gigi Hadid instead of a Wiltshire riverbed.
* Please note, I’m a food writer not a fashion journalist. Roxhill Media takes no responsibility for you looking a right Charlie at your Christmas party.
