I had organised to meet my friend James in Borough Market last month while I was in London. It used to be one of my main haunts for a few years, while I worked at iris. I lived nearby so I could be in walking distance to the office. I was already salivating at the idea of eating one of Kappacasein’s famed grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I hadn’t had one in two years, and I think it’s still the best in town. I know some have tried to imitate them. I remember trying a grilled cheese sandwich in Maltby Street Market last year and it wasn’t as good. But I digress.
It was a lovely sunny morning and the streets around Borough Market were already crowded. I hopped off a bus at London Bridge and quickly made my way over to the tube exit where we’d organised meeting, thinking I was already late. I just about walked past a sign, my brain assembling bits of information at the same time.
FREE. Ice cream. Insect-like icon?
I stopped and turned around to check the red sign. Given the name of this blog, you can imagine I just can’t ignore a promotional sign advertising free ice cream, with the added intrigue of an insect looking icon. It piqued my curiosity. It’s like they made it for me. It’s a funny feeling to know or imagine that you are the target audience of a piece of communication. I didn’t think that on the spot. A that first moment I was just intrigued and curious enough to stop, and then excited about the promotion.
As I looked at the sign, a guy in a red shirt smiled at me, asked if I wanted to try the insect ice cream, and handed over a flyer featuring The Economist logo. Now the red made sense. The insect ice cream still didn’t.
I smiled back and said something like: “Hi! Really!? But what does The Economist have to do with giving out free insect ice cream?”
You might have come across the promotion already, I checked as I’m writing this and I see this promotion garnered some press in London and Hong Kong over the summer.
They went on to explain that The Economist had run a feature about the future of food being insects, and that they thought it would be a fun device to sell a promotional offer for The Economist: 12 weekly issues for £12 and a free book.
Only a few months before, my brother’s business partner Omar had featured an insect dish in his fun “Nipponexican” inspired menu for his two-week chef’s residency at Carousel. He gave a short speech about insects being a sustainable future for food worldwide before serving a grasshopper taco. I was tuned in to the idea.
There were two flavours available, and that’s when I realised it was “normal” flavoured ice cream with insect bits, rather than insect flavoured ice cream. Chocolate with grasshopper bits, and strawberry with mealworms. My mate James was running late so I had time to chat with the friendly attendants taking care of the promotion while tasting the ice cream. It was pretty good, just like good ice cream with crunchy bits.
I’ve tried crickets and grasshoppers a few times now, and I find it has a kind of texture that breaks. I might have small flat bits that get stuck in my teeth. Other than knowing I was eating insects, it didn’t that make much difference to the ice cream flavour. I recommend trying insects out if you have the opportunity. It’s like most food in that it really depends how it’s prepared – once you get over what it looks like.
Now back to the promotion and feeling like I’m the target audience. By the time my friend James arrived and was also trying the ice cream I had signed up for the promotion. He told me he was already a subscriber. This is a little embarrassing. I like to think I’m the kind of person that reads The Economist. Except I’m really the kind of person that very rarely buys magazines and doesn’t go beyond paywalls online. The fact is I rarely read The Economist, even if I like the idea of it. I mostly stopped buying print magazines when I was still a teenager, and now I have so many articles online to read for free I don’t bother paying for subscriptions. I’m also not loyal to any one publication. I must have read like three articles on the website since I subscribed. Paying £12 isn’t enough to change my reading behaviour, which is kind of interesting in itself.
However I am sensitive to ice cream and intriguing promotions. I think the main lesson here is that if you really bother thinking about your promotional activity with a specific kind of person in mind then it doesn’t feel like a hard sell on the receiving end. That also means the risk of excluding the people who just won’t go near insect ice cream, by the way. I think it’s better than a middle road of nobody caring at all. I enjoyed spending a few minutes having a new experience, a useful book (Pocket World in Figures), and the opportunity to trial The Economist. That alone was probably worth my time and money.
