Marketing spotlight 2021/22

Helping Aussies add sunshine to their meals with Australian pineapples

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the pineapple marketing levy into a range of activities to drive awareness and consideration. Here’s a quick look at some of the activities and achievements in 2021/22.

In 2021/22, the Australian Pineapples marketing campaign was focused on driving awareness and inspiring consumers to consider pineapples during their grocery shop planning process. The goal was to shift pineapple from an infrequent purchase to a shopping list staple for the target audience of ‘independent singles’ aged 35-55. The campaign centred on creating compelling pineapple-inspired content designed to cut through cluttered social media feeds via an ‘always-on’ approach.

Content creation and recipe development

Food photographer Bonnie Coumbe was commissioned to create recipes to excite and inspire consumers with simple and interesting ways to enjoy Australian pineapple to grow awareness and consideration. Key insights suggest that pineapple as a snacking option is appealing to the ‘independent single’ persona. To target this audience, two new pineapple recipes were created: ‘pineapple nachos’ and a ‘pineapple and ginger granita’. These recipes were accompanied by high-quality imagery and a video showcasing simple snacking ideas featuring fresh Australian pineapples.

Social media

The ‘always-on’ social media campaign was designed to increase awareness and consideration of Australian pineapples and encourage purchase among targeted audiences on Facebook and Instagram.

The recipes created by Bonnie were shared, and content was developed to educate consumers about Australian pineapple, selection and storage tips, and ways to enjoy the fruit throughout the year.

There were 64 posts shared on the Australian Pineapples social channels during the campaign. The top engaged posts were the ‘vegan pineapple’ and ‘coconut yoghurt bark’ on Instagram, which achieved an engagement rate of 21 per cent and 889 engagements. The ‘pork pineapple burger’ received 1,612 engagements and an engagement rate of 10 per cent on Facebook. Five of the posts during the campaign were videos, with the most popular being the new ‘pineapple snacking ideas’ stop-motion video, which achieved some 101,000 impressions and reached 94,000 people on Instagram and Facebook.

The social media campaign achieved:

• Over two million impressions across Facebook and Instagram (higher than the KPI of two million impressions)
• Over 36,000 engagements across Facebook and Instagram, currently at 91 per cent of the total KPI of 40,000
• Average engagement rate on Facebook of four per cent (KPI > four per cent) and 10 per cent (KPI > 8 per cent) on Instagram, showcasing content that resonated with the audience.

Brand partnership

Australian Pineapples benefited from a first-time partnership with News Corp, with home page takeovers, simple usage applications and recipes on Taste.com.au, Australia’s top food website.

The brand partnership resulted in some 205,400 impressions across the site from inclusions such as the Taste TV package with pre-roll, social video and surrounding media, homepage takeovers, and standard display across Taste.com.au.

In 2021/22 the Hort Innovation Marketing function underwent a significant shift in their approach to investing marketing levies. You can read more about this in the 2021/22 Hort Innovation Company Annual Report at www.horticulture.com. au/annual-report-portal.