Marketing snapshot - Hortlink 2016, spring

This Hort Innovation Mango Fund marketing snapshot has been taken from Hort Innovation’s Hortlink 2016, spring edition.

Mango auction

October 6 marked the annual auctioning off of the ‘first tray’ of mangoes at the Brisbane Produce Market. Gold Coast fruiterer George Manettas, from Earth Markets, snapped up the tray for a massive $22,000, with the auction raising funds for Diabetes Queensland and Life Education Queensland.

All of the action was caught on camera and broadcast around Australia to 356,000 people watching Channel 7’s Sunrise, 1.5 million watching ABC’s national evening news, and Channel 9’s Brisbane and Gold Coast news viewers.

Meanwhile, 20 online publications including The Daily Telegraph, The Herald Sun, The Courier Mail, The Advertiser, The Queensland Times and the Sunshine Coast Daily shared the news online, reaching a total audience of over 20 million people.

ABC Radio also included the auction during news broadcasts throughout the day around the country, bringing the total PR reach to over 23 million people.

The auction was a hit on social media too, with online foodie influencers attending the event to share their experience and love for mangoes with their community as a way to get all their mango-loving followers excited for the season to come. A number of influencers shared this love on Instagram, including @wholesome_ines, @thebrunchplight, @bnecafes, @fitfoodandsoul, and @bnefoodie, receiving 1509 likes, 40 comments and reaching 116,777 people.

Mango madness has spread fast and thick through both Australia’s media and social media space – a strong indication of ongoing support in the coming months.

Mango emoji campaign

This year is set to be Aussie Mangoes’ biggest season yet, with the campaign for the ‘mango emoji’ kicking off in September and running until the end of the season.

The campaign is inviting social media influencers and Aussie mango lovers to advocate for the inclusion of a mango emoji alongside the other fruits and vegetables used in everyday social media communication, so they can express their love for the fruit on digital platforms.

In encouraging mango lovers across Australia to rally behind the cause and register their support by using the hashtag #mangoemojiplease, there is an opportunity for large-scale involvement to drive and maintain awareness for the mango season.

The campaign has seen retailers, brands and influencers getting on board, with Woolworths tweeting the #mangoemojiplease hashtag to their 15,000 followers and brand Weis sharing the campaign’s video with its Facebook fan base (watch the video on the Aussie Mangoes page here).

At the end of the campaign, the results and sentiment will be aggregated to produce a proposal for the mango emoji that will be sent to the worldwide authority for emojis – the Unicode Consortium – in an effort to convince them to add the mango to emoji keyboards around the world.

PR activity

This season’s PR activity has started out strong and continues to ramp up.

On September 21, an interview with Australian Mango Industry Association CEO Robert Gray was published in The Cairns Post regarding the upcoming season in Far North Queensland. The Katherine Times also published an interview with Katherine mango grower Mitchell Curtis regarding the record rain in the region on September 24, and also jumped aboard the mango emoji push with this article on September 27.

On October 26, ABC Rural published this story about grower Peter Marks celebrating his 30th harvest.

As magazines look ahead to their summer issues, mango recipes and tips have been locked in with publications including Marie Claire, Home Beautiful, Recipes+, Women’s Fitness, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Better Homes & Gardens and Good Health.

Social media activity

Facebook: With only eight posts published since the beginning of September, the Aussie Mangoes Facebook page (www.facebook.com/AussieMangoes) has hit the ground running, as the posts have already reached 598,452 people, received 14,566 likes and reactions, 1299 comments, and have been shared 2109 times.

Instagram: During the month of October, the Aussie Mangoes Instagram channel (@aussiemangoes) set exciting benchmarks so early in the season.  In just eight weeks, October’s 31 posts received 4113 likes and 192 comments, bringing the average engagement to 139 per post. Considering the average for the whole 2015/16 season was 106, records are already being broken and new benchmarks set for the months to come.

Mango Mess-tival – turning five this year

Mango Mess-tival is a celebration of summer held at the peak of mango season on Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach, in conjunction with North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club. This year it is being held on December 4, marking its fifth anniversary.

On the day nippers get to perform all their activities with mangoes and consumers get to meet the growers and taste the four main varieties. Key media will be invited too, to help spread the joy of the event.