Marketing snapshot - June 2019

This marketing update was prepared by Hort Innovation for the winter edition of Talking Avocados, produced as part of the Hort Innovation Avocado Fund investment National avocado industry communications program (AV18003)…

It has been a busy quarter for Australian Avocados with consumer-focused promotions across a variety of channels, including television, social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, as well as targeted partnerships with consumer-related publications and platforms. Read on for more detailed activities between March and June 2019.

Television

Television plays a key role in driving mass awareness of campaign communications and ensures key messages for Australian Avocados are delivered to consumers in both metro and regional Australia. The latest burst of television was staggered across eight weeks from March to May and was secured across several key metro and regional networks including Network 7, Network Nine, Network Ten, WIN, Southern Cross Austereo and Prime. The campaign took advantage of the strong opening programming schedule of 2019. This included programs such as My Kitchen Rules, Married at First Sight, Masterchef, and Bachelor in Paradise, as well as consistently rating News and current affairs programs.

In every market the campaign successfully hit the goal of least 53 per cent of the target audience seeing the ad at least two times. This is a forecasted reach of 4.3 million.  Regional New South Wales television exceeded this goal, where at least 54 per cent of the target audience saw the ad two times.

The television activity will continue at the end of August and will be in market for six weeks in two bursts – between August and September and between October and November. In an attempt to reach more consumers, it will include an increased investment in regional markets with the addition of Victoria and Tasmania.

Digital

To support the television campaign, Australian Avocados undertook digital activity during March to May. This included the Australian Avocados’ ‘smash an avo’ ad across catch up television, Spotify and YouTube. All channels surpassed the KPI of a 70 per cent completion rate and 70 per cent viewability.

As of April, catch up television had a completion rate of 99 per cent and a viewability rate of 94 per cent while serving out over 517,000 impressions. Spotify had a completion rate of 70 per cent and over 247,000 impressions, and YouTube served over 905,000 impressions with an 84 per cent completion rate.

Here are some definitions for some common digital terms:

• Completion Rate - The percentage of all video ads that play through their entire duration to completion. Calculated as complete video plays divided by ads served.
  
  
• Viewability - An online advertising metric that aims to track only impressions that can actually be seen by users. For example, if an ad is loaded at the bottom of a webpage but a user doesn't scroll down far enough to see it, that impression would not be deemed viewable.
  
  
• Impression - An impression is the display of an ad to a user while viewing a web page. If a single web page contains multiple advertisements from one advertiser, one impression is counted for each ad displayed.

Out of home retail, gyms and street furniture

From March until the end of June the campaign aimed to extend its reach and drive frequency across Australian Avocados’ core audience with ads appearing on display panels in gyms, street furniture and shopping centers. This form of advertising reinforced the message of avocados making everything better and helped drive action before consumers entered a retail store - a critical step on the path to purchase journey.

This activity achieved its KPI with 43 per cent of the audience seeing the key message an average of 12 times. The campaign included 81 retail/shopping center panels (100 per cent of which were in direct proximity to retail grocery stores), 44 street panels, a mix of content across 909 gyms, including a full-page print ad within Fitness First Magazine.

Social media

Australian Avocados ‘always on’ approach to social media continues, ensuring avocados remain top of mind for Australian consumers. Demonstrating that engaging content can be super simple, a creative Avocado toast recipe was the top performing post on Facebook with a higher than average engagement rate of 11 per cent and reached over 72,000 people. The post also generated positive conversations in the comments section and had many people sharing the post to their own Facebook pages. On Instagram the top performing post featured the Shepard Avocado along with the health benefits of avocados in general. This post generated over 6,600 likes!

Australian Avocados also partnered with influencers Leah Itsines, 4ingredients and former Australian Bachelor Sam Wood. Both Sam and Leah created recipes and content which were pitched to media, shared on their own personal social media channels, as well as across Australian Avocados owned social media channels. Together both Sam and Leah have an Instagram following of over 690,000 and provided a combined opportunity to see of over 9 million.

Public relations

The PR element of the campaign was designed to educate Australians on the similarities and differences between Hass and Shepard avocados. The objective was to drive awareness of how to select and use the two varieties to ultimately turn Hass lovers into Shepard lovers and Shepard lovers into Hass lovers. The rationale was to reduce the traditional dip in sales during transition period between Shepard and Hass seasons. Between February and May, a total of 48 pieces of media and social coverage was achieved across a variety of platforms including television, radio, print, online and social media. Highlights included: a TV weather cross to an avocado farm on breakfast program ‘Sunrise’, features within Lifestyle and The Guardian, and on the mybody+soul Instagram page.

Myfoodbook

Myfoodbook is an online recipe and cookbook network that allows users to create and collect their favourite recipes from chefs and cooking brands, to create their own personalised digital cookbook. avocados continue to be extremely popular on Myfoodbook. In total, avocado recipes have been viewed over 250,000 times. Avocados were also featured in two season cookbooks ’30 Minute Meals Foodbook’ which has already been downloaded 5,500 times since its release in April, and ‘Winter Warmers’ which was only issued on 7th June 2019.

Taste.com.au

From March to May Australian avocados partnered with taste.com.au to feature avocado recipe content. Avocados featured in three Taste TV videos which were viewed over 114,000 times and were featured in three recipe galleries which had over 36,000 page views. Highlights included articles detailing how avocados can transform cooking and a panko-crusted avocado Japanese noodle salad recipe.

Website (www.australianavocados.com.au)

The new Australian Avocados website has continued to grow since its launch in February 2019. Over 50,000 new visitors have visited the website versus 33,000 in the previous quarter, and the website pages have been viewed over 89,000 times compared to 53,000 in the previous quarter. The most visited pages on website included the ‘about avocados’ section, ‘recipes’ and ‘guacamole recipe.’

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