The Pea is Back!

"We've had another hugely successful year," says Tim Mudge of PVGA, coordinator of the award-winning Yes Peas! campaign.

The news delighting the pea industry is that the Yes Peas! campaign for 2007-8 generated a highly impressive £699,000 worth of coverage across the media, from print, to internet, radio and television. Converted into PR value this is nearly £1.4m worth of coverage, giving a return of 33:1 against the £42k which funds the campaign each year.

"We feel that the campaign has genuinely transformed the public perception of the pea," says Tim Mudge. "When we started the new campaign just over five years ago, peas were regarded as something nice but slightly dull to have on the side of the plate as an accompaniment. Now, they are used constantly as an ingredient in all sorts of styles and schools of cookery.

"We have had great success in the media with TV chef Rachel Green's recipes for the campaign, and are also really pleased that numerous other chefs now use peas as an ingredient too.

"Just to add to our pleasure on the amount of coverage we have generated we have just learnt that TNS data for 2007 shows that sales volume increased by 1%, which is very pleasing." added Mudge.