How to get free PR with Muddy Boots

Simply FMCG

Miranda from Muddy Boots went from being Sir David Frost’s PA to running a premium brand helping transform the humble burger, and in this podcast this super charismatic entrepreneur shares her advice on getting lots of free PR and awareness for your brand.

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(We’ve had a techie problem with the recording and the Muddy Boots podcast can’t be played in our usual nice little audio streamer. When you click on the link an new window will open up and the podcast will start).

Read the whole story here!

Marketing Meat with Muddy Boots

Muddy Boots, producer of top-quality, ethically-farmed beef, landed their first big deal with Waitrose in 2010. Ocado carries their full range of burgers, as well as their new line of meatloaf, and you can also find the brand in Budgens. They’ve also just launched their first book Burgers & Sliders, with the publisher Ryland Peters & Small, who published the well-known Hummingbird Bakery book. Burgers & Sliders is available at Amazon, bookstores, as well as at Waterstone, Lakeland and Waitrose. Miranda Ballard, who founded Muddy Boots with her husband, Roland, shared her experience transitioning from her work as Sir David Frost’s PA to running a premium beef brand.

Getting their Hands Dirty

In their 20’s, Miranda and Roland were living and working in London, Roland in freelancing film production and Miranda as Sir David Frost’s PA. Though they loved their work, they wanted to set up their own business together, as doing so was essentially in their blood; Roland’s parents worked together as farmers, while Miranda’s parents set up their own estate agency. So Miranda and Roland knew that working together was something they wanted to do. At the same time, they were looking at Roland’s dad’s farm, which housed a herd of fantastic Aberdeen Angus beef. The Aberdeen Angus breed had grown trendy at that time, around 2006, cropping up everywhere – in supermarkets, like Waitrose, and in restaurants – but, up to that point, no one had done a brand of Aberdeen Angus beef products. With this in mind, they went on holiday in the Swiss mountains, and the combination of the high altitude and alcohol led them to write their letters of resignation in the pub. Next morning, they woke up with the horrifying thought that they might have posted them; but after they sobered up, they determined, truly, to go for it, no regrets. They spent about three months moon-lighting in research on their startup, whilst holding onto their day-jobs jobs. Miranda went from mingling with celebs and living the London life to wandering around farmer’s markets and eating loads of burgers on weekends. She thought this was a real step up.

They then officially quit and moved back to Worcestershire, where Roland’s parents were kind enough to let them live at the farm rent-free so that they could get started. They bought the beef from Roland’s parents, made a little kitchen on the farm, and started selling at farmer’s markets for the entire first year.

Self-educating about the Food Industry

The only thing Miranda and Roland knew about the food industry to begin with was that they really loved Innocent drinks. They loved the marketing and adored how innocent were changing the face of food and drink. Along with other innovative food brands, like Elle’s Kitchen and Gu, made a huge splash in the market and with Miranda and Roland. And other, more established brands took note. Miranda remembers seeing the cringe worthy rip-off of the Innocent-type tone on a Barclay’s Bank door – a sign posted, “Push me, I’m open”. This sort of anthropomorphism just got completely carried away. So though they didn’t want to be an innocent copycat in that way but innocent was the catalyst that excited and inspired Muddy Boots to become a national food brand.

The first practical direction they took in setting up their food product was to address the local authority of environmental health and the local authority of trade and standards. Before they did or built anything, they talked with the authorities, and it was through these talks that they learned about how to keep their kitchen and their product hygienic, as well as how to make the products and be allowed to make them. Trade and standards provided information about food labeling, after which they could spend time developing the marketing and trying to find their voice, which took them a good year to find. Those two initial calls, which most put off, seemed to Miranda and Roland like the simplest first step.

In chilled food, and in beef particularly, the regulations and standards just got up a whole new league when you supply supermarkets, and the cost to finance a proper unit themselves was beyond them. They also didn’t want to manage an industrial kitchen full of staff; that wasn’t what excited them about having the brand. They wanted to concentrate on the sales and marketing. So the first thing they did was outsource production to a fantastic butchery and food manufacturer; they outsourced distribution to people who do it much better than they could manage in their little van; and, of course, the supermarkets sell it. There were three components they outsourced and indirectly contribute to the employment of around 10-15 people.

In their own office, there’s Roland, Miranda, a part-time bookkeeper who works on Monday, and full-time person called Jen, who helps with sampling and runs a bit of the day-to-day processing of ordering ingredients. So even though they outsource production, they’ve kept complete control over every bit of traceability on the ingredients ordering or packaging.

Another great bit of practical self-education was just the “doing” of it. The 4^th of December, 2008, was the official first day they started working together, and they stood on their first farmer’s market stall on January 7^th, 2009, just over a month after they’d committed to the business. That was a quick rush, working until midnight, still not having much of a clue as to how things would turn out. Miranda is proud to have made that leap of faith so early on, trying to sell it, and learning along the way. “It does not exist until someone has exchanged their money for it,” she enthused, “and then you experience that amazing feeling.” They took £248 their first market, and they never felt richer. It was all downhill from there.

At that stage, they didn’t have much of a brand. They just printed off some labels on the computer, which taught them an important lesson about the difference between inkjet and laserjet. They used inkjet and then surrounded their product with icepacks and ended up with big black blotches of ink on their ready-meals. Even so, according to Miranda, getting out there and selling it, getting people’s feedback, is the best way to do it. You learn as you go along.

Miranda’s biggest piece of advice: “Take your time, do your research, and go and sell your product, even if it’s in homemade inkjet-run labeling.”

Branding Beef

In developing their brand, they wanted to come up with a name, like innocent, that wouldn’t restrict their product line. They knew they would be producing something in beef, but they started with ready-meals and burgers, and only later committed to burgers when they saw there was more of a gap in the market. They didn’t want to name themselves after the farm, or something beef or something burger, and they also wanted a name that people would remember and hopefully would make them smile. They made a list of farm terms but hadn’t come up with the right name until, at two in the morning, Miranda called Roland, who’d already headed to the farm to open up the kitchen, and blurted out, “Muddy Boots, that sounds fun!” Roland’s response was, “Yes, I like it. But shall we just talk about this in the morning…”

Moving from Farmer’s Markets to Waitrose

In their first year, they did 350 market stalls with no profit at all, but they really learned about their product and about themselves, which built up their confidence. Although sales came naturally to Miranda, who’d been a chatterbox all her life and adored public speaking, Roland, on the other hand, had always been quite shy. But sticking him in a market stall and make him literally sell for his life, and he was forced out of his shell. “You totally transform yourself; you become a different person,” said Miranda. After a year of this, they came to a point where they needed to decide what to do.

At that time, Roland just happened to come across an internet article recruiting small businesses for a BBC series. They didn’t think they’d get it, but they applied and were chosen. “We got a weird, lucky, wonderful break,” said Miranda. It was a series called “High Street Dreams” with expert mentors, who walked them through a process of essentially “scaring the living daylights out of us, taking us apart and putting us back together again.” Through that filming process, they were introduced to Waitrose, which has a wonderful , not-much-talked-about, undervalued department which encourages small business owners to come on in and “take it for a spin,” so to speak, stocking their product in their nearest stores. Waitrose has 600 small producers in the country with these local listings. And this is how Muddy Boots got in; they were started in ten stores.

Hindsight is 20-20

In hindsight, Miranda and Roland realized they’d lost a little organic growth by rushing into supermarkets, because this was the very start of their second year, and they hadn’t yet acquired a following. Nobody knew them or their product, apart from customers at the farmer’s markets, so they weren’t going into the supermarkets with a following or a demand; rather, they thought they could go into the supermarkets and then build the demand. But, according to Miranda, that was absolutely wrong, and their growth has been slower and tougher for it, in trying to get more stores from Waitrose, in expanding their listings and their line, while not even really reaching their good sales target of 10-12 units per store per week, which always leaves them with a bit of wastage. Fortunately Waitrose and Ocado are incredibly supportive. They know there’s a marketing value to small businesses like theirs, as Muddy Boots does a lot with them and for them to support the contract.

Muddy Boots is now in 124 stores, and it’s going rather well. They’ve recently launched their new line of meatloaf. However, when acquaintances are in a rush to get into Waitrose or other supermarkets, Miranda suggests not even to approach supermarkets for two years, and instead to try to build demand in independent stores, markets and shows. “Wait until somebody comes into a supermarket and recognizes your product, rather than somebody comes into a supermarket, and you have to try and get them to notice you for the first time.”

If they could go back and do it differently, at the same time that they were promoting the high-volume chilled products, they might have come up with a couple of frozen varieties or an ambient product that accompanies the range, just in order to get their name into independents to familiarize consumers with the brand, even if the burgers remained their main product.

Sampling

Sampling is Muddy Boots main spend. They sample at least one day a week. They’ve got their new products, particularly a new flavored burger launching soon, Mature Cheddar and Worcester Sauce flavor, and they’ve booked in a month-long attack on the stores in order to get around to all of them. Though it can be a bit annoying for the stores, this tactic always boosts Muddy Boots’ sales and brings their wastage down. Sampling is the best return and most proactive thing they can do – actually being present in the stores, letting people try the product, pointing it out on the shelves, so the shopper knows where to come and get it next week. They have a 1 in 4 conversion rate from a sample piece to a sale, and their presence in-store is great for PR and marketing.

Networking as a Small Business

At the moment, small business is trending. The government is pushing it, the media is pushing it, particularly for the food and drink industry, because it’s so tangible. Miranda and Roland divided the company tasks between them; Roland took finance, the running of the company, and distribution and logistics, while Miranda took PR, marketing, recipes and sales. On her end, Miranda attends every networking event, including food networking events and “women in business” events, the latter of which is particularly popular at the moment. She never comes away without gaining something. “You can just sign up for these things; get on the mailing list. Sometimes you might not make a cracking contact, but you never leave without taking something from it.” Apart from that, Miranda just loves staying in the game.

Slowly she is building up relationships with people. During one of these networking events, she heard one piece of advice that stuck with her. Businesses that don’t network are the ones that don’t make it – they are the ones that just hide themselves away in the office, keep their heads down and don’t look up.

Due to their exposure on the BBC series, they had a 3.5 million media reach in 2010. They managed to do that again on their own in 2011 and 2012, and by April of 2013, they’d already accomplished over a three million reach, due to mentions in the Telegraph and the Times.

“There’s no point in being so proud,” Miranda surmises, “to think that you can just lock yourself away in a room and come up with a business; it’s just silly.”

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