Marketing snapshot - September 2018

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the banana marketing levy into a range of activities to grow awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Banana Fund. Here’s a look at some of the most recent activity…

The Australian Bananas campaign has launched the new ‘Peel Good, Feel Good’ creative and updated jingle. The campaign commenced in mid-August and several channels have been used to drive home the new creative message in locations familiar to the target audience.

Television

The Australian Bananas TV campaign started at the end of August and ran for four weeks through all five national metro markets as well as regional markets across the country. The campaign was targeted at a “grocery buyer” audience as a cost-efficient way to gain maximum views and involved a mix of 15 and 30 second ‘Peel Good, Feel Good’ TV commercials.

Australian Bananas was featured within key programs over this period such as The Block, Nine’s highest rating renovation series, as well as The Bachelor, Survivor, Have you Been Paying Attention and 60 minutes, as well as both Nine and Ten’s news and light entertainment programming. The goal is to reach over 4.2 million of the target audience at least two times.

Digital

Australian Bananas continued to tap into the ever-growing multi-screen behaviour of the target audience to extend the overall reach of the campaign. A variety of digital strategies targeted in this period including catch-up television, YouTube and entertainment/lifestyle content sites across Nine, NewsCorp and Fairfax media. In addition, a new ‘app targeting’ strategy has been launched to target mobile users with fitness apps, reminding them that nature’s energy snack is the best option when it comes to fitness fuel. 15 and 30 second TV ads, as well as a brand new six second YouTube ad were used to engage this audience. The overall aim is to reach 3.5 million through the various digital channels above.

Cinema

Australian Bananas were featured in cinemas for six weeks across the school holiday period in September and early October. The 15 second TV ads were played before several key film releases such as Christopher Robin, Johnny English, Smallfoot and the highly anticipated Spiderman series spin-off- Venom. Overall reach was further bolstered by posters appearing on digital screen in the foyer.

Out of Home

Transit

The eye catching ‘Peel Good, Feel Good’ posters were featured across 250 bus sides in metro markets nationally, with the added inclusion of 2 giant double deckers buses to really drive the message home. The posters were also featured in 5 large format locations as a bonus. The campaign is predicted to reach over 4.6 million people about four times each on average.

Retail

Panel advertising has been used to ensure that consumers are reminded about Australian Bananas close to their point of purchase. A total of 410 paid panels and 60 bonus placements have been used, with 70% located outside grocery locations. The target of the campaign is to reach over 3.6 million consumers an average of 5.2 times each.  

Gyms

Screens at gyms and social sport venues have played a large part in building brand awareness for Australian Bananas with ads featured on over 3,390 screens per fortnight for 8 weeks. A piece of editorial content highlighting the health benefits of bananas was also included in the Fitness First magazine (which has an average readership of 116,000) and Fernwood magazine (that has just been launched) along with full page ads.

Social media

The Australian Bananas social media strategy has an “always on” approach with 1-2 posts delivered each week. The ads have been seen at least once by over 3.7 million unique users over the campaign so far. The next goal is to create videos for Facebook that give viewers the chance to interact with Australian Bananas in a meaningful way. In total, the Australian Bananas ads have been seen over 10.1 million times and in September, content reached over 712,000 users and delivered a total of 716,000 engagements.

Micro-influencers

Through October and November, Australian Bananas have leveraged several micro-influencers to promote bananas within their communities. These influencers have been employed to create content on their mid-morning healthy banana habits that will be shared on their social pages, as well as Australian Bananas’, to encourage regular banana consumption by keeping them top of mind for those seeking healthy eating habits.

Public relations

A pro-active approach to PR has been used to help build positive conversations and position Australian Bananas as a health snack food in the media. Dietitian Susie Burrell has been contracted as the Australian Bananas ambassador for the next three years to continue to promote the health benefits of bananas through monthly blog posts on her blog Shape Me as well as ongoing social media support. Since the campaign kick-off in July, Susie has created two blog posts and promoted bananas across her social media channels twice. Susie also developed a content piece for ‘World Heart Day’ on September 29th which featured in top tier lifestyle publication, the Daily Mail Australia – Femail which has a reach of over 2 million. To stay top of mind with food media at key occasions, 15 new delicious and healthy bananas recipes have been developed and distributed to media. Australian Bananas secured 22 pieces of coverage on recipes, reaching more than 10 million Australians to date.

Events

The 2018/9 program kicked off in October, building presence on strong legacy events and adding new ones into the calendar. This included:

• MS Moonlight Walk, Saturday 6 October with 5,000 participants
• Ride2Work Day, Wednesday 17 October (awaiting participant figures)
• JP Morgan Corporate Challenge, Wednesday 31 October with 9,500 participants

Bounty bags

The Bounty Bag campaign has continued with an average of 17,000 banana cases being handed out to new mums every month.