Marketing snapshot - September 2018

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the passionfruit marketing levy into a range of activities to grow awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Passionfruit Fund. Here’s a look at some of the most recent activity…

In-store activity

115 in-store demonstrations ran for 6 weeks over June and July in Coles and Woolworths stores in NSW, VIC and QLD. Fresh passionfruit was sampled, and recipe brochures handed out. Consumers were also educated around seasonality, storage and handling. The results were significant with 13,997 total interactions with consumers (an average of 122 per session), 8,526 samples handed out (an average of 74 per session) and 7,788 passionfruits sold in store during the sessions (an average of 68 per session).

Gardening Australia

The Gardening Australia team got in touch after seeing a post on the Aussie Passionfruit Facebook page of Melissa Smith’s Farm, and filmed a segment over two days in May. The segment aired in September and was the most watched episode of the year. It will also be used across the ABC Asia Network for the next 7 years, reaching up to 70 million viewers.

Although the focus was on growing passionfruit, the benefits of the segment were numerous. It is a useful resource when people get in touch with growing questions, it connects the consumers with the product and the hard work that goes into growing passionfruit, and highlights the ‘clean and green’ credentials of Australian Passionfruit to Asian markets.

Upcoming activity

Aussie Passionfruit has an ‘always on’ social media approach that will continue leading up to and into the summer flush with ‘a splash of passion’ messaging. Since June, over 580,000 consumers have been reached with passionfruit content on Facebook alone.

Media outreach will continue with hampers being sent out to top tier media outlets to encourage media coverage of Australian passionfruit.

Six new passionfruit recipes have been developed and photographed, with three to be used in the summer flush, and the other three to be used in the winter 2019 flush.

The key component for the 2018/19 PR campaign is a farm famil, taking one media outlet representative and one influencer to visit a farm in the lead up to the winter flush. A famil (short for familiarisation) is a tactic that public relations practitioners use to educate media and influencers and encourage them to write about a product. The famil will specifically look to convey a set of pre-determined key messages that are delivered through the experience.

In fresh produce, this often involves taking the media to a farm to demonstrate how the produce is grown, picked and packed before being transported to retail outlets. It is an opportunity for the media to get direct access to the growers and hear stories first-hand.