Marketing snapshot - 2019/20

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the mango marketing levy into a range of activities to drive awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Mango Fund. Here’s a quick look at some of the activities and achievements of 2019/20, for both the domestic and export marketing campaigns.

CONSUMER MARKETING

Public relations (PR)

The Aussie Mangoes PR campaign received a total of 257 hits with media this season – a very successful year with a huge buzz from the press. In December 2019 alone the combined reach of coverage was 119 million.

Mangoes featured on TV screens across Australia, including in the lead up to Mess-tival, with Studio 10 showcasing the mango Budgy Smugglers, a celebrity chef cooking up his Christmas mango recipes on The Today Show and friend of Aussie Mangoes @schoollunchbox demonstrating his mango creations on Sunrise.

In print, Aussie mangoes had pagelong features across Better Homes and Gardens, Delicious, Super Food Ideas, Taste Magazine and Woman’s Day, all urging readers to get creative with Aussie mangoes over Christmas time, and throughout the summer.

The web felt the buzz of mango season too, with recipe and season coverage from lifestyle.com.au, Best Recipes, 9Kitchen, body + soul, and delicious.com.au to name a few.

Influencers

From season start to finish, Australian Mangoes sent selected influencers fresh trays of mangoes to inspire content creation. Collectively, these influencers posted about Aussie Mangoes over 374 times. Thriving on Plants was the most prominent influencer, who shared her passionate love for the king of fruit with her 367,263 followers. After comedian Nazeem Hussain chose mangoes as his specialist subject on the TV program Celebrity Mastermind, his fanatic dedication was rewarded by Aussie Mangoes with a tray of late season varieties. Tess Begg also shared her love for mangoes to her 267,000 followers, while Healthy Eating Jo created Mango and Toasted Coconut Cheesecake for her 188,000 fans.

This activity generated 39 per cent more influencer posts this season than last.

Digital

The 2019/20 season digital approach was all about giving consumers reasons and reminders to buy mangoes through social media promotion on Facebook (www.facebook.com/aussiemangoes) and Instagram (@aussiemangoes).

Aussie Mangoes focused on making sure the king of fruit was on as many screens as possible and introduced Instagram stories as a new format for the page. Through educational, inspirational and informative content focused on Australian mangoes, almost three million of the target audience were reached through Facebook posts, and Instagram delivered 14.2 million opportunities to see mango content.

Events

A new royal was crowned at the Brisbane Produce Market Annual Charity Mango Auction. Alexandra Catalano took home the season’s first tray of mangoes and the coveted title of 2019 Mango Monarch thanks to a generous $25,000 winning bid. The event generated 22 pieces of TV and radio coverage for Aussie Mangoes. The Today Show crossed live from the event on the day and also covered the news the following Friday morning. The auction was also covered by the National Nine Morning News, 7 News Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Mackay and ABC Radio Brisbane, Darwin and Southern Queensland.

Also in events, the 8th annual Mess-tival took place on the first day of summer and crowds were drawn to celebrate the making of ‘Mango Beach’ at Bondi in New South Wales. The event was heavily pre-promoted by the likes of Time Out, Mouths of Mums, Broadsheet and Wentworth Courier. Studio 10 went live on air ahead of the big day, also giving away exclusive mango Budgy Smugglers. Mess-tival generated 30 pieces of news reaching 5.8 million consumers.

Budgy Smuggler collaboration

Beaches in Australia got extra fruity in the 2019/20 season with limited edition mango Budgy Smugglers, produced through a collaboration with the popular swimwear brand. As well as the Studio 10 giveaway noted above, Aussie Mangoes ran an exclusive competition with Mouths of Mums, offering readers a chance to win their very own pair. On social, fans had their own chance to win the summer’s hottest swimwear – the competition was one of the most engaged with posts for the season.

Engagement

Consumer research shows that most consumers decide to buy mangoes when they are already in the supermarket and 63 per cent are influenced by catalogues in their purchasing decisions. For this reason, having engaged and supportive retail partners as well as a united industry form a core engagement pillar of the Aussie Mangoes strategy.

Engagement activities in 2019/20 included retailer pre-season events, grower pre-season events, grower market tours, point of purchase displays, retailer head office launches, retailer tool kits, mango sales challenges and other activities as opportunities arose.

Notable successes from the season included all retailers officially launching the season delivering major marketing campaigns at the back end of October. This included significant spend across television, radio, online, magazine, print advertisements, as well as in store point of sale material, radio and bespoke activities.

Other wins included the addition of Australian Mangoes point-of-sale materials into Aldi in the form of educational varietal cards.

Prominent mango displays took hold in October 2019 supported by excellent print media, the momentum built during November and December, and continued throughout January, with late season varieties supported through to the end of March 2020.

For the fifth consecutive season, mangoes ranked as the number one fruit by number of appearances in print advertisements from supermarkets. Mangoes were also number one for ‘share of voice’, achieving an 11 per cent share of advertisements, equating to a 20 per cent share of voice (share of voice considers the advertising activities for one brand within the total advertising activity for an entire sector or product type).

EXPORT MARKETING

Aussie Mangoes marketing activity happens in key export markets during the season. In 2019/20, highlights included:

• In Hong Kong, a sales challenge was conducted in 33 Wellcome stores and 25 Upscale stores (Market Place by Jason, ThreeSixty and Olivers) together with point-ofsale materials and in-store sampling across 36 stores for four consecutive weekends.
• In Singapore, in-store sampling was conducted in 15 Cold Storage stores and nine Giant stores, along with extensive point-of-sale materials to further encourage shoppers to buy Australian mangoes.
• In New Zealand, the Australian Mangoes Engagement Manager conducted an in-market visit for the Countdown chain's conference for managers.
• In South Korea, 154 in-store sampling sessions were conducted across 23 Homeplus stores and six Lottemart stores. Point-of-sale materials were translated and supplied to the retailers, as well as a digital advertising campaign promoting the Aussie Mangoes brand.
• In the USA, the campaign involved extensive point-of-sale materials and digital promotions that were co-funded with promotion partners such as Guimarra. Nearly 180 in-store demonstrations were conducted with Pavillions as well as a sales challenge with Gelson’s stores.