Marketing snapshot - 2019/20

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

Influencer outreach

The marketing program collaborated with lifestyle influencer 84th&3rd to develop recipes and capture images and video that showed persimmons as part of an eye-catching grazing platter. This content was showcased via social media and the platter video was among the top performing posts of the campaign, being viewed 326,000 times.

Social media

Social media was used to inspire and educate the online community about the Australian persimmon season. Throughout the campaign 16 posts were developed and posted across the Persimmons Australia Facebook (www.facebook.com/persimmonsaustralia) and Instagram (@persimmonsaustralia) channels to increase awareness and excitement about the season.

These posts included inspiring, beautiful imagery, as well as grower content and delivered strong engagement. Both channels exceeded performance targets, with a combined total of more than three million opportunities for people to see persimmon content.

The best performing content was the video of the persimmons platter, netting a large amount of the reach for the entire campaign across both Facebook and Instagram. Outside of this, still imagery of fresh persimmons with educational messaging performed well.

Events

Persimmon sampling had been planned to take place as part of the Tropical Fruit Exhibit in the Woolworths Dome at the Sydney Royal Easter Show in April. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled due to incoming restrictions from COVID-19. The budget from this event has been reallocated to next year’s budget.

Impact of COVID-19

Due to the unfolding COVID-19 situation, the industry’s social media content calendar was reviewed to ensure that communications were appropriate in the current climate while continuing to inspire Australians to eat persimmons. With increasing interest in home cooking and health during this period, the review included the following decisions:

• Refining the tone of voice to ensure contextual appropriateness (for example, no referencing ‘entertaining with friends’)
• Ensuring messaging remained helpful and useful during social distancing / isolation periods, such as showcasing recipes great for freezing, or sharing tips on extending the life of fresh produce through proper storage techniques
• Dialing up health messaging to educate consumers on the nutritional benefits eating persimmons can provide
• Continuing educational messaging on selection, usage and storage ideas.