This marketing update was prepared by Hort Innovation for the March 2019 edition of Living Lychee, produced as part of the Hort Innovation Lychee Fund investment Australian lychee industry communications program (LY16005)…

The 2018/19 Australian Lychees campaign was centred on announcing the lychee season and inspiring purchase through lychee ideas, including delicious lychee platter ideas for entertaining during the summer and festive season.

Media outreach

Public relations activities enabled the development of media coverage for Australian lychees from publications such as Woman’s Day and the Herald Sun. This included the circulation of a media release announcing the season, and tips for selecting, storing and peeling lychees, and inspiring ideas for eating them. A second wave of media outreach was also done to support Chinese New Year.

To extend reach and coverage, lychee hampers were also distributed to eight top-tier media outlets and food influencers, along with media materials about Australian lychees in December 2018.

Overall, it was a successful PR campaign that delivered over 2.7 million reach opportunities (vs. a target of two million reach).

Social media

The Australian Lychees social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram) were predominantly used to drive inspiration on ways to consume lychees, whether individually or through entertaining during the summer, connect Australian lychee fans with growers and lychee farms, and share handy tips related to the delicious fruit.

Social media was also used to engage Australian Lychee fans with a competition, encouraging lychee lovers to share their own lychee platter creation and tell us why lychees are the #perfectplatterpartner to win a gorgeous platter by The Platter Project.  This competition not only engaged and inspired the Australian lychee target audience, it also allowed for collection of lychee imagery that can be re-purposed on the Australian Lychee social channels in future campaigns.

The Australian Lychee social media activities were able to deliver 1.1m reach opportunities against a target of 400k. Lychee lovers are highly engaged and respond well to updates direct from the farm. Moving forward, there will be increased emphasis on grower content while stylised lychee food content will continue to excite and inspire the lychee community.

Influencer activity

With #perfectplatterpartner being a key message for this season’s Australian Lychee campaign, the final lever used was leveraging influencers through the TRIBE network to develop lychee platters, keeping the delicious fruit top of mind among consumers. This also ensured we extended consumer reach prior to the season’s close.

In total, seven micro-influencers posted their take on a lychee platter during the month of February, reaching over 160,000 people and the campaign maintained a strong engagement rate of over 3%.

For any queries relating to the lychee marketing program or specific information provided above, please email marketing@horticulture.com.au.