Marketing snapshot - Hortlink 2016, winter

This Hort Innovation Table Grape Fund marketing snapshot has been taken from Hort Innovation’s Hortlink 2016, winter edition.

The marketing budget for the recently completed season focussed predominately on market access and export activities. A portion of the budget was dedicated to domestic activity including social media, advertising in and developing in Western Australia, and developing an image library. Export activities included the Now in Season program.

Social media

The social media campaign was a central component to the domestic marketing plan for the 2015/16 season. Based on a review of the 2014/15 social media activities and results, a decision was made to go to market to appoint a social media provider, with the new provider bringing to the table messaging that would resonate with our audience and the ability to deliver with a smaller budget (half of the year before).

The approach was to keep table grapes top of mind as a healthy snacking option for the family through targeted social conversations that would inspire ‘sharing’ on Facebook, was a move from the previous year’s strategy to present table grapes as a decadent part of a recipe.

To ensure the content was going to be shared with consumers (Facebook fans) the content had to be interesting, relatable, engaging and humorous – supported with a paid media approach. A paid media strategy meant that not only does table grapes target its direct fans, but also the broader Facebook audience. The posts delivered some great results, with some of the table grapes ‘gifs’ (mini-movies) being seen by almost 40,000 people and the quirky little grape puns performing well – a ‘Share this grape for no raisin’ post reached over 177,000 people, of which more than 3000 shared the post and 7300 liked it

Another stand out result was the “Which Grape are you” video post which reached 221,043 and had a strong engagement rate of just under 60 per cent.

The program also reached out to key social media ‘influencers’ in order to encourage extension of the reach to their growing number of followers. These influencers used table grapes in their own posts more often and generated significant user-generated content, which can be used for the next campaign.

Overall results:

New trade presenter

The trade presenter has been updated with the most current information and images from the new photo library completed this season. The presenter is a take-away resource sheet mainly given to visitors at international trade shows. It will be translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic and Thai.

What does domestic marketing mean for growers?

Results to date indicate that table grapes is reaching a large number of consumers through a few activities that have been undertaken within the budget allocated. It is important to ensure continued communication with consumers while table grapes are in season to ensure the fruit is top of mind as consumers are more likely to buy if the product is ‘on their radar’.

Fruit Quality Standards program (TG15502)

This three-year project has completed its second year and some great progress has been made to date. The project’s objective is to help the major retailers understand the specific tasks they need to undertake – and support them where possible – to ensure the consumer gets a consistently good eating experience with Australian grapes. This will in turn grow demand for table grapes and improve the profitability of growers and producers.

As well as visiting key retailers to open a dialogue around the importance of a standard fruit quality, Nielsen has been engaged to ensure access to consumer results around the satisfaction rating of early season product. This will be used to help support the importance of a standard fruit quality to the retailers – particularly in regards to lost sales as a result of consumer dissatisfaction with the quality of the product.

Overall, there has been a significant improvement in the quality of early season grapes, although there still needs to be some further work done on grapes supplied in the very early weeks of the season.

From the Nielsen research, overall consumer satisfaction with grapes purchased in November and December 2015 was 87 per cent, so we are definitely making good progress in this area.

Now In Season

The multi-industry Now In Season program continues to form an important part of the table grape export strategy. As part of the program a number of industries including summerfruit, citrus and apples and pears will be promoting Australian produce in Asia under the ‘Now in Season’ brand.

The focus markets for the table grape component have been Thailand, China, Japan, Philippines and Indonesia at this stage. The marketing activities include in-store retailer activities such as merchandising, point of sale and in-store sampling to drive awareness, trial and purchase of Australian table grapes.

A progress report will be available once activities are finalised and a final report will be available on completion of the project, which is expected to be in August 2016.