On Monday the 23rd of October, Ceres hosted a media training day for those shortlisted in the National Fish and Chip Awards.

The event featured a jam-packed schedule of workshops and discussions, designed to sharpen communication skills and offer valuable insights into the world of media. Overall the event was very well received and immensely valuable for those seeking to go far in the awards.

Here is an overview:

The day kicked off with a highly informative media coaching session led by the reputable Liz Goddard from CoComms, who has more than 20 years experience as a senior journalist and people manager at the BBC.

She informed us that a good media story must be: relevant, appealing to your audience, mindful of diversity and something that people will want to share. To meet this criteria, the story must be interesting and you must make yourself available to the journalist to offer case studies and ‘real’ people.

She also emphasised the importance of preparation before starting an interview. It is not enough to just answer the questions the interviewer asks, you must first ask yourself what is in it for you; what do you hope to achieve from this story and how are you going to make sure it is told correctly.

It is also crucial to ask whether the interview is live or pre-recorded. Pre-recorded interviews are likely to be condensed and spliced, so it is important to remain consistent with your message throughout.

Next was a round table discussion with previous winners of the National Fish and Chip Awards: Kelly Barnes – Krispies Fish and Chips, Nick Miller – Millers Fish & Chips, Bonny Ritchie – Simpsons Fish and Chips.

They provided valuable insights into the ‘whirlwind’ of media that hits you and your business immediately after winning the awards and hopefully served as a great source of inspiration for those shortlisted this year.

It was also a brilliant opportunity to ask any questions about how to make the marginal gains necessary to beat the competition and win the award, pushing standards to the very pinnacle of our industry.

After lunch, we had a session lead by Stelios on professional photography and the importance of taking and using good quality images.

He recommended that businesses set aside some time to take bulk photographs of their products and emphasised that professional equipment is useful but not necessary, modern phone cameras will suffice.

That being said, there are some relatively cheap bits of kit such as a lightbox which will ensure perfect lighting and a crisp background for your photos.

It is also important to feature contrasting colours which will make the image pop and standout. This can be achieved using free editing software, such as Snapseed.

Seafish also have a large asset library publicly available here.

Then we had another round table discussion with previous winners of the Drywite Young Fish Frier of the Year Award: Charlie Collins – Frydales, Zohaib Hussain – Zero Plus Fish Bar, George Papadamou – Papa’s Fish and Chips.

Their insights demonstrated that winning this award can launch your career to incredible heights as long as you are willing to ‘milk the cow’. This was surely motivational to those in the room shortlisted for the same award this year.

It also gave them an opportunity to learn more about what it takes to win the award and succeed in the industry afterwards, as well as ask any questions about the process as a whole.

To finish off the day, Stelios lead a session on the significance of being proactive with media engagement. We learned lots of strategies to stay ahead of the curve and maintain an effective media presence.

This included many key points, such as the importance of engagement, and how as an industry we should make an effort to like, comment and share each others posts to help the boost our positions in the algorithm.

Facebook was also named as the most important social media to target for our demographic, followed by Instagram.

Overall, the media training day was a resounding success. Many of the attendees have expressed how valuable they found this training and are now in a much better position to deal with media opportunities and grow their business in the digital realm.

We would like to once again thank Ceres for putting on this great event for those shortlisted in our awards.