Marketing snapshot - Hortlink 2018, edition 2

This Hort Innovation Lychee Fund marketing snapshot has been taken from Hort Innovation’s Hortlink 2018, edition 2.

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the lychee marketing levy into a range of activities to grow awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Lychee Fund.

As noted in  the last edition of Hortlink, the now-concluded 2017/18 lychee campaign was the first in a new three-year strategy for the industry, building on the celebration of lychees and the ‘loving lychee’ campaign of previous years. The focus on this first year was on using social media to drive inspiration and traditional media – via public relations activity – to drive education.

Social media

Social media is a great marketing avenue for a small budget, being a cost-efficient way to reach the masses (an opportunity previously only available via ‘above the line’ media such as television and newspapers).

Using content that was both created specifically for the campaign and curated from other sources, the Aussie Lychee social channels celebrated ‘Summer Time’, ‘Me Time’ and ‘Party Time’ over the season. During the course of this campaign, more than 707,000 people were reached with lychee inspiration, tips and more on the Aussie Lychees Facebook page, with the number of fans of the page growing to close to 25,000. Through the Aussie Lychees Instagram account, more than 13,120 people were reached with beautiful lychee images, recipes and serving ideas.

To generate additional social activity and gain quality lychee images to repurpose in the Aussie Lychee social channels, there was also the launch of a ‘#lycheelover’ competition involving social media influencers.

We asked these influencers to share their #lycheelove on social media to win a $200 VISA gift card and a lychee hamper. Participants delivered beautiful images using relevant lychee hashtags, reaching more than 119,000 people combined. The Fresh Prince of Produce was the competition winner. He uploaded images of an entire lychee feast, including a lychee pickled taco salsa, lychee margarita and lychee green salad (you can click through the gallery of images here) as well as these fresh lychees.

Public relations

For the 2017/18 season there was also outreach to Australian media to help drive education and inspiration through high-reaching coverage. This involved circulation of a media release announcing the season, plus the provision of tips for selecting, storing and peeling lychees, and inspiring ideas for eating them.

All media coverage positioned lychees as the ultimate summertime celebration fruit. Coverage was secured using three bursts of activity. In the first, lychee hampers in the shape of Christmas trees were sent to 10 top tier media outlets. This was followed by continuing summertime media outreach, with a final burst of outreach for Chinese New Year, tapping into the popularity of lychees for this celebration.

Over the course of the campaign, 42 pieces of coverage appeared across traditional and social media, with a combined reach of 8.6 million people – a fantastic result.

Highlights included an article in The Herald Sun, which has a reach of more than one million people, and content in New Idea magazine, which has a reach of 1,525,000.

Coming up

Attention will now be turning to the 2018/19 campaign, with activities to be planned and finalised in due course. Look for updates in industry channels as they become available.