Grant Morgan on how Louis Kennedy developed its own IP in The Fruities & Veggies – and what’s next for the brand

Grant, it’s great to connect! In exciting news, Louis Kennedy has created its own IP in The Fruities & Veggies. Talk me through the seed of the idea and how it came about.
I like what you did there, Billy. Proper journalist!

Ha! It’s downhill from here.
So, I’ll take you back to 2017. As a father of four – at one time all under four – I knew how well the likes of Burger King and McDonald’s incentivised kids to eat rubbish by giving them toys. I wanted to turn that thinking on its head… I wanted to incentivise kids to eat fruit and veg by giving them toys – and to put education around healthy living at the absolute heart of it.

We developed a wonderful family of characters – The Fruities & Veggies – and considered how to communicate best to kids where fruit and veg comes from. Even some of the brightest people don’t know what makes something a fruit or a vegetable. ‘Five a day’ wasn’t working. So we went out to pitch the concept – and were almost evangelical in our process.

How did it go down?
Every single supermarket dismissed it. They put it on the ‘too hard to do’ pile. So, in 2019 we put it back in the draw and thought: ‘Perhaps it’s not actually as good as we think it is… Maybe we’ve got it wrong.’ Then Covid came and went and suddenly mental health, sustainability and purpose could not be higher on the political agenda.

And that helped kickstart activity around the brand?
Yes! We were already working with One Stop on several CSR campaigns – they’re owned by Tesco and have over 1,000 stores across the UK. They’re a community-driven business and they love to work with the communities they serve. Jack Taylor, their Community & Partnerships Manager, together with the wider business just got the power of The Fruities & Veggies.

Last year, we ran the first Fruities & Veggies campaign, producing an Easter activity book with the characters. All proceeds went to FareShare, One Stop’s charity partner for Fruities & Veggies. We then produced a second activity book last Christmas and launched the first six collectable characters in January.

We also partnered with 2Simple, a brilliant company that has their edtech in over 7,000 schools across the UK. We launched a competition, asking budding illustrators to design houses for Arthur Apple, Betty Beetroot and Pete Potato for the first three books. We received thousands of responses, and the winners now have their designs featured in the books, written by Ivor Baddiel and illustrated by Brett Gowlett. They’re available to buy now at One Stop and through 2Simple’s ecommerce store. So we’re slowly growing the brand and we have big plans for it – including exciting new partners and international expansion.

Amazing. And how did you get the balance right between education and fun with the brand? You need to engage to educate right?
You do – and it’s not easy. There’s a lot of trial and error. In one of the books, Tia Tomato gets invited to two parties on the same day. She doesn’t know which one to go to and it’s a beautiful story that delivers a great social message. That doesn’t deliver a message about the benefits of eating fruit and veg per se, but it helps readers connect to our characters. Once you’re connected with the characters, you’re more likely to be open to engaging with the wider messaging we’re putting across with the brand.

There are strands about healthy eating and wellbeing in all of these stories, but you must be careful that you don’t deliver the message in a way that puts readers off. Ivor has achieved this beautifully. He’s both brilliant and funny in equal measure.

Down the line, which categories do you see Fruities & Veggies thriving in?
I’m going to turn into Tony Blair from 1997 – education, education, education. Yes, it would be great to have plush toys in The Entertainer, but it doesn’t get there without a journey through education. Education is at the heart of the brand. One Stop has produced a fantastic website with recipes, games and information on physical and mental health. And every product we’ve sold so far has a QR code that takes people to that website. There’s a huge space for our characters in schools and education.

Do the worlds of education and brand licensing collide often?
They may be perceived as diametrically opposed but they’re not. And if we get it right – as many others have over time – and keep banging the drum, we will get the traction the brand deserves.

Has this process of creating this brand sparked an appetite to do it again? Create more IP?
As a creative, that itch is always needing to be scratched. Creative people are constantly developing new ideas. And this is actually the second time in our 35-year history that we’ve developed a brand, SoccerSuckers being the first in 1999. It was a patented collectible, featuring an array of licensed characters, with a reverse sucker that sticks to most gloss surfaces.

We had phenomenal success with it and then in 2010 created the England team to raise funds for grassroots football around the World Cup. It was a wonderful campaign with 83% sell-through at retail and we may be doing something big again next year with the brand around the World Cup… So it’s not new to us, but Fruities & Veggies is very different. This is a brand. And we’ll be focusing our efforts on this for a while before creating any new IP.

Makes sense! Now, this is our first time chatting so while I’ve got you, I wanted to ask about the origin story behind Louis Kennedy?
My first job was in hospital radio, followed by freelance journalism and I used to write satire for the likes of Viz and Private Eye. It put no food on the table – having left school without any qualifications. Back then, in the mid-Eighties, it was hard enough to get a job of any substance, and I ended up doing lots of different and really poorly paid jobs!

Then in 1991, I formed Louis Kennedy. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted it to do, but I knew I wanted it to creatively deliver social good – and this was long before sustainability and purpose were the zeitgeist they are now. Having been a creative when it came to the written word, I wanted to do something that had some creativity to it, so I started designing toys and supplying them to cereal companies, FMCG brands and magazine publishers as promotional goodies.

And you had no formal training in toy design?
None! And yet, with no formal training I wasn’t too bad. In 1995, I received a call from the National Autistic Society. They said: “We’ve got the rights to Thomas the Tank Engine. We’ve seen your collectables – would you make some for us?” So we did – pin badges, plush toys, figurines, keychains… They had a bank distribute them. I asked for their sales data and found that they were receiving donations from an audience that wouldn’t usually support the charity. It was driven by the appeal of both the license and the collectability – and I thought there was something in that…

We could unite a charity, a brand/retailer and an IP owner to deliver real social good – and by 2007, we owned the space. I’m super proud to say that we are the agency behind Red Nose Day for Comic Relief, Pudsey Bear for BBC Children in Need, Monkey for PG Tips and many other award-winning partnerships. Partnerships with Purpose is our core skill and three decades on, our work has raised over 250m for good causes.

Remarkable. Was there an education process with brand owners? That this was about more than just making them money.
There absolutely was. In the late 90s, CSR wasn’t a thing. We were the innovators – this was our Pot Noodle; if you know the story! I don’t want to massage our ego, but this model didn’t exist before Louis Kennedy, so there was a huge education process. But it’s since evolved from a ‘nice to do’ to something integral to a brand’s comms, PR, marketing and DNA. Without purpose you have no brand. It really is that simple. We came out of Covid and suddenly purpose couldn’t be higher on the agenda. Audiences genuinely cared about the purpose behind the brands they were buying into. And the brand owners sat up and listened.

And I imagine pairing up charities with brands is a bit of an art form. It has to make sense, right?
Yes, and it’s a specialist art at that. Our work is truly magical. Tracey Richardson, our Director of Licensing & Partnerships, will tell you that it’s all about the fit. It’s only about the fit. The consumer has to know within seconds why… Why is Care Bears supporting Young Lives Vs Cancer? Why is Teletubbies supporting Barnardo’s Big Toddle? It’s all about the fit, or it doesn’t work.

Terrific! Grant, this has been a pleasure and congrats on everything you’ve done so far with Fruities & Veggies!