Marketing snapshot - Hortlink 2016, spring

This Hort Innovation Summerfruit Fund marketing snapshot has been taken from Hort Innovation’s Hortlink 2016, spring edition.

PR & media activity

The 2016/17 marketing campaign kicked off in October, with a continued focus on driving awareness of the availability of Australian summerfruit, and enticing Australian consumers to eat more summerfruit, more often.

Following a similar strategy of execution as last year, the 2016/17 campaign will leverage PR and social media to get consumers to eat more stone fruit as a snack and in new and interesting ways.

Media tactics include the development of a media kit with a fact sheet and six new summerfruit recipes and images, targeted to major metro, regional and community newspapers, TV and radio outlets, food and health publications, and online news, trade, horticulture and lifestyle outlets.

Fresh product is also being sent to top food publications and bloggers to prompt recipe development, features and social media engagement.

The key objectives of this communications campaign are to:

• Build high consumer awareness of the availability and quality of locally grown Australian summerfruit, especially at launch and during peak season
• Provide each product (peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots) with its own voice under the Australian Summer Stonefruit brand
• Position summerfruit as nature’s essential summer treat, easily enjoyed in so many mouth-watering ways (as a snack or dish)
• Drive awareness amongs consumers of the best ways to select, handle and store summerfruit
• Increase repeat purchase of summerfruit, especially during peak season.

Television campaign

For the 2015/16 campaign there was a successful partnership with celebrity chef Lyndey Milan, and this will continue for 2016/17. Once again summerfruit will be showcased via a range of recipes on Lyndey’s Channel 7 show Lyndey Milan’s Summer Cooking Secrets, and recipes will also be featured on Lyndey’s website off the back of this.

Social media

The Facebook (www.facebook.com/AustraliaSummerStonefruit/) and Instagram (@AussieSummerStoneFruit) strategy will run from mid-October through to the end of March 2017.

New recipe ideas and beautiful food shots reposted from consumers will form a portion of the content that appears in these social channels, as will tips on handling, picking quality fruit and storage. Two posts per week are planned from November onwards.

Staying in touch with food trends and topics trending with the online audience will also help form content across the social channels.

Exporter co-promotions

Summerfruit are once again involved in the Now In Season program, which is being led by the Victorian Government. Now In Season is a multi-industry, multi-country campaign that promotes Australian produce in priority international markets. Executions will include sampling and point-of-sale materials to encourage trial and purchase of Australian summerfruit overseas, with priority countries including The Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, China and United Arab Emirates.

During October, expressions of interest for co-funding on exporter activations in market were called for. This initiative is designed to provide support to exporters/ businesses that wish to continue to develop opportunities and relationships with distributors and retailers in Asia.