IVSI together with the Consortium for the Protection of ASTI Docg and the Consortium for the Protection of Provolone Valpadana, implemented a project co-financed by the European Community and promoted in the United States for three years (2017-2019) with events and initiatives in many cities. The Program, titled EEQ, Enjoy European Quality, was an information and promotion campaign for wines, deli meats and cheeses with European designations of origin. The objectives of the initiative were to raise awareness and recognition of quality systems, spread knowledge of the appellations involved, and promote good practices in the consumption of the products covered by the campaign, broadening awareness and increasing opportunities for conscious consumption. The initiatives were aimed at consumers and professionals, as well as chefs, sommeliers and food experts, but it was also able to carry out initiatives dedicated to trade press journalists, food and wine bloggers and opinion leaders.
Among the states involved: New York, Massachuttes, Illinois, Ohio, California, Michigan and Florida. The program relied on specific initiatives for each target audience, such as press events, point-of-purchase promotions for consumers, and the many seminars and tasting events, combined with careful and constant communication efforts that included social media actions. In this way, all the communication messages, the intrinsic qualities of the products and their conscious pairing contributed to increasing awareness of these unique products in such an important and strategic market for our made in Italy food&wine.
In January 2005 IVSI organized the participation at the Winter Fancy Food fair in San Francisco and in July 2005 at the Summer Fancy Food fair in New York, important advertising platforms overseas. At the exposition booth of the IVSI positioned within the show room for Italy managed by the Italian Trade Agency – ICE, participating visitors got the possibility to taste deli meat products already approved for the export into the US. A brochure-recipe book and a screening of a short film in English informed the fair visitors about the quality of the “made in Italy”.
In 2003 an important and segmented market research was conducted in the USA divided into a first phase of desk research and a second phase of poll, consulting both the trade and the consumers. The aim of the research was to get an idea of the US market for deli meat products, consumer profiles, their food purchasing behaviour, sales, trade channels and contemporaneously gather information on characteristics, size and potential of the US market for deli meat products in general as well as for Italian cold cuts.
In 2004 the IVSI participated in a promotional program of the Italian agri-food sector, promoted by the agency ICE (Italian Trade Agency) in the US with the participation of ASSITOL (Italian Association of Nutritional Oil Industry), the Consortium of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, the Consortium of Grana Padano cheese and of the Consortium of dry-cured ham of San Daniele. The program included the publicity campaign “The taste of Italian Style” which paired the excellence of Italian food with the “Italian design” (the second supporting element of “Made in Italy”), a realization of a brochure-recipe book, an event for journalists at the Executive Dining Room of Condé Nast in Times Square, tasting events “Design Italian Style” in New York, Boston and San Francisco, promotions at restaurants in New York and Fort Lauderdale in collaboration with the magazine Saveur and culinary weeks at Whole Foods Market, Grace´s Marketplace and Citarella Gourmet Market in New York.
