Marketing update
Marketing Impact August 2026
Publication date: September 3, 2026
Read about how we are delivering on our priorities of growing domestic demand, accelerating exports and providing insights for impact.
Domestic marketing
Growers don’t just want marketing that looks good. They want to know it is working hard.
That means campaigns built on evidence, designed to solve real market challenges, and delivered in ways that stretch levy investment further.
Across avocado, nursery, cherry and summerfruit, Hort Innovation-funded activity is showing how smart marketing and education can change consumer behaviour, create demand and make every dollar work harder.
Export marketing
How export marketing is growing demand in key overseas markets.
Australian growers are earning a premium reputation in overseas markets, and strategic export marketing is helping growers make the most of that opportunity. By building awareness, increasing consumer demand and strengthening relationships with retailers, export campaigns for products such as avocados and cherries are helping Australian produce stand out in key international markets. The result is stronger market presence, increased sales opportunities and greater value returned to Australian growers.
Impact
Making it easier to find evidence-based insights that can inform vital business decisions.
Growers and industry have visited Hort IQ more than 10,000 times in the past 12 months, seeking evidence-based insights to inform vital business decisions, and those searches are about to become a whole lot easier, thanks to the introduction of Leafy AI.
Hort IQ is Hort Innovation’s one-stop shop for consumer, category, production, supply and trade data across Australian horticulture. It is rich with dashboards, reports and webinars, covering everything from shopper behaviour and category performance to exports, supply and market trends.
Insights
If ‘influencer marketing’ hasn't been part of your sales strategy, you might want to reconsider.
‘Influencers’ now play a regular and important role within Hort Innovations marketing mix.
Influencers are people who have established an engaged community that knows, likes and trusts them – and pays attention when they, for example, demonstrate how to cook with onions in a way that feels easy, useful, delicious or worth trying.
It’s an influencer’s ability to spark active engagement with their content that can turn them into a marketer’s dream. Rather than passively and begrudgingly being served advertising, people who ‘follow’ or actively seek out influencers are happy to consume their messaging.
Independent creative company Thinkerbell often uses influencers as part of their marketing mix when crafting Hort Innovation's campaigns.
Spotlight
How do you grow demand for a fruit people already think they know?
Bananas are everywhere. They’re a hero of the fruit bowl, a staple in schoolbags, and land in almost every supermarket trolley in the country.
87 per cent of Australian households buy bananas every year.
For most crops, that would be a dream. For bananas, it creates a challenge.
When almost everyone already buys your product, growth doesn’t come from shouting louder. It comes from finding new moments where your fruit makes sense; new reasons for people to reach for a banana again.
