Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the pear marketing levy into a range of activities to drive awareness and consumption. Here is a quick look at what happened during the year...

The 2025/26 marketing strategy focused on helping consumers rediscover Australian pears by showing how their versatility can bring fresh interest to everyday eating. The program aimed to get more Australians buying and eating pears by improving visibility at the point of purchase, inspiring broader uses across cooking, baking and entertaining, and strengthening appeal among younger and light-buying households. 

Activity was split across two key areas: domestic marketing to get more Australians buying and eating pears, and export marketing to strengthen demand in established international markets.

Insights that drove our thinking

Research shows that pears are considered a 'forgotten fruit'. Only 14 per cent of consumers spontaneously say they intend to buy pears in the next seven days, compared with 64 per cent for apples and 67 per cent for bananas. Prompting lifts pear consideration to 26 per cent, highlighting the importance of visibility and reminders.

For export markets, the opportunity was to build demand in key destinations such as New Zealand and Canada, while also managing practical challenges around supply, fruit size, quality and retailer requirements.

What did the campaign achieve?

Creative refresh and social campaign 
The campaign refreshed the Australian Pears campaign creative with a more modern look and feel, using simple, memorable messages such as “Pair with flair”, “Find your perfect pear-ing” and “Simply pear-fect”. The creative put pear versatility at the centre, showing pears in entertaining boards, salads, baking and everyday cooking. Across social and retail channels, 26 assets were created, including static, animated, influencer and recipe-led content.

Influencer and recipe content 
To make pears feel more relevant and appealing, the campaign partnered with Khanh Ong and Courtney Roulston for “The Great Pear-Off”, a sweet-versus-savoury content idea. The influencer content helped spark interest online and showed how pears can work in different dishes. The content generated close to 2 million combined video views across the creator assets, with strong saves and shares indicating that people were interested in trying the ideas themselves. Ten new recipe videos were also developed to give shoppers more practical ways to use pears at home. 

Paid social media activity 
Social media advertising was used to build awareness and keep Australian pears visible through the season. With $73,000 in media spend, the campaign delivered around 18 million online impressions (the number of times campaign content was displayed to people), reached approximately 3 million social media users and generated 14,900 engagements. The campaign also tested follow-up advertising, serving pear content to people who had already interacted with Australian Pears assets to encourage stronger consideration. 

Retail media and shopper conversion 
Retail activity focused on making pears more visible at the point of purchase. Woolworths activity at the start of the season helped lift average weekly pear sales by 19.5 per cent and average weekly units by 27.5 per cent compared with the pre-campaign period. The campaign also recruited new shoppers, including more than 141,000 customers who had not previously purchased pears.  

At Coles, the Pears x Red Rock Deli collaboration focused on the use of pears on entertaining boards, with the partnership helping access premium retail placements, including a homepage shoppable video. This showed the value of working with partners to stretch levy investment further.

Export market activity 
Export activity focused on strengthening demand in New Zealand and Canada. In New Zealand, activity with Woolworths NZ used in-store, online and direct-to-shopper channels to promote Australian pears.  

The Woolworths NZ activity delivered more than 9.4 million online impressions during the Back to School burst, while the broader promotional campaign sold 113,000 units over the reporting period, compared with 64,000 in the same period the previous year. Foodstuffs and independent activity also supported Australian pears through front-of-store screens, eDMs, store communications, support packs and display competitions.  

In Canada, the program was affected by fruit size and supply constraints, which reduced the planned volume and retailer participation, providing an important learning for future export planning.