Marketing snapshot - Hortlink 2017, edition 4

This Hort Innovation Mushroom Fund marketing snapshot has been taken from Hort Innovation’s Hortlink 2017, edition 4.

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the mushroom marketing levy into a range of activities to grow awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Mushroom Fund.

Summer Mushie Mash-Up

This summer will see a large push for Australian mushrooms, with a focus on ‘Summer Mushie Mash-Up’ providing consumers with more reasons to eat more mushrooms.

The activity has already kicked off with in-store demonstrations and digital activity, with a major radio campaign also beginning in December in major metropolitan regions nationwide. This activity will involve with a mix of advertisements, sponsored editorial and interview-style communication talking about mushrooms, and include elements of Australian Mushrooms ambassador, Miguel Maestre. The MyFoodBook e-cookbook for mushrooms has been refreshed, and will also be pushed by the radio campaign.

Public relations (PR) activity

The Australian mushrooms PR campaign has continued, with the media loving Miguel (61 per cent of the coverage has included mention of Miguel as the industry’s ambassador).

In the last three months, there has been a total of 151 pieces of media coverage, with a total reach of over 16 million people.

Search engine optimisation

Significant work has been undertaken in the months since the last Hortlink on improving the search engine optimisation (SEO) for the Australian Mushrooms website. Essentially, this involves ensuring the website shows at the top of search engine searches for relevant terms (such as ‘mushroom recipes’). The work here has been very effective, with an increase in organic search visibility, and a substantial increase in organic traffic, with a year on year increase of 47 per cent.

Australian Mushrooms newsletter

Another communication tool that continues to drive consumers to the Australian Mushrooms website is the direct mail newsletter. This newsletter uses the database established by the Mushroom Lovers Club and provides a monthly update with the latest recipes to 25,000 consumers. To sign up for yourself, you can use the sign-up form on the Australian Mushrooms consumer website.

Events

The Australian Mushrooms brand has continued to have a presence at various events around Australia, including the Adelaide Show, where the Mushies Caravan won 1st prize for the best food and wine exhibition for the second year in a row. 

This year, Australian Mushrooms have appeared at 10 of the country’s biggest events, handing out over 230,000 brochures and 124,000 samples.

In-store demonstrations

Australian Mushrooms has continued with in-store demonstrations in October and November. At time of writing, 259 of the planned 369 sessions had been completed, with consumers sampling Portabella pizzas. Full results will be available in the next edition of Hortlink.

Social media activity

The Australian Mushrooms ‘always on’ approach to social media ensures that mushrooms are top of mind for consumers year-round. Each month, the social media activity reaches around two million people with Australian Mushrooms content. The Facebook page has continued to grow, currently sitting at over 124,000 fans who see delicious recipe content posted weekly. The content posted on the Facebook page really resonates with consumers, with the posts having received over 43,500 likes in the three months since the last Hortlink.

Digital activity

Another burst of digital activity started in October, and finished up in late November. In its initial six weeks (the period it had been active at the time of writing), more than four million impressions had been delivered across webpages, YouTube and catch-up TV services. A single impression is counted when an ad is displayed on a website. This activity burst involved showing Summer Mushie Mash-up videos, to tie into the summer campaign.

Farm tour

In November, 20 of Sydney’s leading and influential chefs were invited to the White Prince Mushroom farm for a tour and cooking session, led by Australian Mushrooms ambassador Miguel Maestre. The tour of the farm showed the chefs the whole process of growing mushrooms, and ended with them picking their own to cook a delicious ‘Mushies on Sourdough’ creation for lunch.

Miguel also did a demonstration and spoke about the benefits for including mushrooms on menus for the chefs, including ease and plated costs. This is the first in a series of these nationwide events aimed at increasing the use of mushrooms in food service. An Instagram competition will be run in conjunction, encouraging chefs to upload their best #mushiesonsourdough creation to win a knife set.