Marketing snapshot - September 2018

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. Here’s a look at some of the latest campaign elements…

Australian Mushrooms TV campaign

The Australian Mushrooms TV campaign kicked off in early August with the exciting new CHOP CHOP creative highlighting how easy it is to add Australian Mushrooms to everyday meals (check them out on YouTube here). The ads were on air for five weeks, on both free to air and subscription television, in metro markets around Australia as well as regional markets in New South Wales. Australian Mushrooms appeared in popular TV shows such as Masterchef (1.3 million viewers), The Block (1 million viewers), The Bachelor (900,000 viewers), Survivor and Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures. All metro and regional markets exceeded their goal of 40% of the demographic viewing the advertisement twice.

Australian Mushrooms were also the proud broadcast sponsor for Gogglebox Australia on Foxtel. Season 8 commenced as the program continues its entertaining reactions format, and places Australian Mushrooms at the top of mind of grocery buyers across the nation. Gogglebox is projected to reach 228,000 viewers per episode, with the sponsorship lasting 4 weeks starting in early September.

Out of home

Australian Mushrooms featured on both static and digital billboards throughout metropolitan and regional areas around the country. Each billboard ranged from one to four weeks of activity, in locations varying from shopping centres to high traffic roads ad highways. This activity commenced in mid-August and to date, the large billboards have had a total reach of over 3.6 million people with each person seeing the campaign an average of 8.2 times and the smaller billboards in retail locations have had a reach of over 2.8 million with a frequency of 8.7 views per person. These results have proven the campaign has had an excellent reach to primary grocery buyers.

Digital activity / online video

Australian Mushrooms have used digital media advertising to hit targets of traditional marketing avenues such as print and TV. Specific sites included major television catch up sites (such as 7Plus, 9Now, 10Play, SBS on Demand) as well as big news and entertainment sites (News.com, SMH.com, Daily Telegraph). These placements were supported by advertising on YouTube and Spotify platforms that target consumers through key food networks and food related channels. The Mushrooms campaign has begun to deliver strong results with the catch-up television strategy delivering over 100,000 impressions (views) with 86% of viewers watching the entire ad. The short form video has delivered over 43,000 impressions with 63% of viewers finishing the ad and 79% seeing the ad. The Fly Buys component has begun strong with over 72,000 views as well as the YouTube 6” pre-roll ads having over 520,000 views with a strong completion rate of 92%.

Events

Good Food and Wine Show Melbourne and Sydney

The Mushies Diner was front and centre at the Good Food and Wine Shows in Melbourne (1st – 3rd June) and Sydney (22nd– 24th June). At these events 20,700 mushroom samples were handed out and 24,700 brochures. The footfall at both shows was 61,158. Brand Ambassador Miguel Maestre hosted cooking demonstrations at the Sydney Good Food and Wine Show on Saturday (12:45 to 13:30) and Sunday (14:30 to 15:15), cooking his delicious “Mushroomroni “N” Cheese” which was sampled to hundreds of attendees.

Ekka – The Royal Queensland Show

The Mushies Diner was brought to the Ekka – The Royal Queensland Show (10th – 19th August). The promotion was housed on a branded exhibit located in the Woolworths Fresh Food Pavilion - the busiest pavilion at the Ekka. The activity included live cooking demonstrations by a chef, tasting sampling, brochures + recipes distribution and enrolling showgoers in the Australian Mushrooms electronic newsletter. A total of 29,010 samples were handed out along with 30,000 brochures. Total footfall at the Ekka was 400,000.

In-store sampling

Australian Mushrooms undertook an in-store sampling campaign to promote and encourage the trial and purchase of mushrooms. The campaign involved 370 sessions at selected Woolworths, Coles and independent stores Australia wide, between 13/06 and 19/08. The recipe sampled was Australian Mushrooms Bolognese. Approximately 29,783 samples were distributed during the campaign (av. 80 per session), 48,987 interactions tracked (av. 132 per session), and the total sales were 2,952kg of loose mushrooms (av. 8kg per session) and 8,214 prepacks (av. 22 per session). The next campaign begins November 2018 with 276 sessions run in Coles, Woolworths and independents. The execution will be a mushrooms and noodle stir fry recipe.

Brand ambassador

Brand ambassador Miguel Maestre developed three new recipes for use in media outreach, owned social media channels and other marketing activities. The aim of these recipes was to make mushrooms the hero of family mealtimes. To do this Miguel re-created classic Australian meals, which families already know and love, and gave them a mushroom makeover. The final recipes were a Funguy cottage pie, Mushroom butter chicken kiev and Mushroomroni’n’cheese muffins. A recipe photoshoot with Miguel was held to capture still imagery and video for these new recipes. The recipes are now available to view on the Australian Mushrooms website.

Public relations

A series of tours took places in early July, where media representatives were treated to a hands-on cooking lesson from brand ambassador Miguel creating his latest mushroom recipes. This resulted in coverage in New Idea Magazine, Men’s Health online, Best Recipes and the Australian Women’s Weekly Facebook page.

Miguel’s new recipes were also shared with media for Father’s Day recipe inspiration which resulted in a cover feature on Canberra Weekly, plus recipe features across BW Magazine (Saturday Daily Telegraph lift-out), Wangaratta Chronicle and Westfield.

Three food influencers were engaged to create and share classic Aussie meals made better with mushrooms to support Miguel’s recipe creation. A total of six recipes were created and shared across the influencers’ owned pages and social channels.

From July to now, Australian mushrooms have been featured in 39 articles (16 media articles and 23 social media posts) with 4.4 million opportunities to been seen by consumers.

Social media

Strong engagement and impressions have been maintained across Facebook and Instagram during this period, with vegetarian and vegan content continuing to dominate preferences. Easy dishes like stir-fry noodles, garlic fried mushrooms and cheesy mushroom lasagnes and pasta received a lot of attention from our fans – anything where mushroom is the hero in a tasty and simple dish.

The Australian Mushrooms Facebook page currently has 145K fans, has had an average engagement rate of 3% from June to October, has garnered 12.5 million impressions and there have been 153,771 actions from followers (ie. Likes/comments/shares).

For Instagram, there are currently 16.2K followers who have an average engagement rate of 8% from June to October and there have been 1.9 million impressions and 46,245 actions (i.e. likes/comments/shares).

eNewsletter

Monthly EDM’s were distributed which included brand ambassador Miguel’s new recipes, mushrooms tips and tricks, cooking inspiration and more. The most popular link since June was Miguel’s mushroom meatballs Bolognese recipe - 1,488 people clicked on this recipe.