Marketing snapshot - 2019/20

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the lychee marketing levy into a range of activities to drive awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Lychee Fund. Here’s a quick look at some of the activities and achievements of 2019/20, for both the domestic and export marketing campaigns.

Public relations

Outreach to Australian media was used to help drive awareness, education and inspiration through high-reaching coverage. This involved the distribution of a media release promoting the new lychee season and a ‘tip sheet’ on how to select, peel and eat the fruit, as well as inspirational recipes featuring lychees. This material highlighted how simple it is to entertain guests with the inclusion of lychees and the nutritional benefits of the fruit.

A social media influencer was also engaged by the program to create engaging recipe content and images that were distributed to both print and online media.

The success of a PR campaign was measured by the number of publications that ran articles featuring lychees, their print circulation and online reach, plus how often a key message was mentioned. In every case the ‘entertaining’ message was mentioned in the articles published by the media. Over the course of the campaign, 11 pieces of coverage were secured across traditional and social media, with a total reach of 8.5 million people, well exceeding the target of 1.5 million and surpassing last year's results by six million.

Social media

Social media activity is a great tool for a small budget, being a cost-efficient way to reach the public. The Aussie Lychee Facebook page (www.facebook.com/aussielychees) and Instagram (@aussielychees) featured curated content that aimed to inspire the target audience to put lychees on their shopping lists.

Twenty posts across Facebook and Instagram during the season were used to target key audiences with beautiful and delicious content inspiring usage occasions. The content used was primarily re-purposed material created by the influencer for the PR campaign, but also included material from past campaigns, and posts from other sources that featured lychees.

Over the course of the campaign, lychee social media content was seen 820,000 times by lychee fans and target consumers of Australian lychees.

Sampling

The main objective of in-store sampling was to increase the number of households that purchase lychees by converting shoppers to buyers while in the supermarket. In 21 Woolworths stores across Sydney metro areas, shoppers were given a choice of trying lychees by themselves or paired with yoghurt. Each sampling session lasted three hours and during this activity, 2,500 samples were given out. The average conversion rate (measured as sales uplift) of the sampling was 11 per cent, with the best performing store being in the Sydney suburb of Gordon with a 30 per cent sales conversion.