Marketing snapshot - Hortlink 2017, editon 2

This Hort Innovation Lychee Fund marketing snapshot has been taken from Hort Innovation’s Hortlink 2017 edition 2.

Hort Innovation is responsible for marketing activities to grow awareness and consumption of Australian lychees, using the lychee marketing levy.

The core focus of lychee marketing for this season was the ‘always on’ social media campaign, championing the ‘Love From Lychees’ theme. Both Facebook (www.facebook.com/AussieLychees) and Instagram (@aussielychees) continued to engage and educate consumers to drive awareness, appreciation and love of lychees.

Facebook

Facebook activity for the season concluded on March 14, reaching well over 1.34 million people with its ‘loving lychees’ theme and tapping into the emotional connection consumers have with lychees. In total, there were 286,000 direct engagements (likes, shares, comments) with the page’s content.

The season’s most successful post was a video showing how to peel lychees, which in the end reached over 225,000 people alone. You can still see the post here.

To drive consideration of lychees throughout the season, and resonate with consumers’ love for the fruit, there were also six ‘Me-Time Moment’ competitions run through Facebook. Participants were asked to describe their best ‘me-time moment’ with lychees, with winners receiving a voucher to buy lychees and an Ella Baché spa voucher. There were lots of passionate entries, ranging from photos, to poems and memories, with more than 3420 total engagements with the content.

Instagram

The Aussie Lychees Instagram audience grew by 55.5 per cent from beginning to end of the season, with 43 posts made and more than 19,320 people engaged with inspiring lychee images and messaging.

Also on Instagram, 14 social media ‘influencers’ across the food, health, fitness, parenting and lifestyle arenas were engaged to curate beautiful lychee content to share in their own channels. The content included serving suggestions, health benefits, and general lychee information and tips. The combined efforts resulted in lychee content being posted every three to four days from early January to mid-March, reaching some 615,860 people.

As reported in the last Hortlink, in addition to this activity there was the engagement of two popular ‘bloggers’, who distributed lychee recipes and other content via their websites and social media platforms, inspiring their audiences (a combined 900,000 people) to enjoy lychees in a variety of guilt-free, indulgent ways. The influencers, Jessica Sepel and Lilian Dikman, were picked as they resonate with the lychee target market, with their activity extending the lychee social media campaign over the season.