Marketing snapshot - Hortlink 2017, edition 3

This Hort Innovation Table Grape Fund marketing snapshot has been taken from Hort Innovation’s Hortlink 2017, edition 3.

Hort Innovation invests the table grape marketing levy into a range of activities to drive awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Table Grape Fund. Here’s a look at the most recent activity.

Tams Gold activity in Korea

After the successful launch of the Tams Gold grape brand into Korea in April – described here in the last Hortlink – a sampling promotion was held as part of the re-branding campaign. Australian table grape sampling promotions were delivered at five branches of Hyundai Department Store in Korea during May.

As a result of the Tams Gold brand launch event, Korean retailers noticeably gained confidence in selling Tams Gold at their stores, due to the good taste and strong marketing strategies.

The sampling promotion was a great success, with significant sales increases across the participating stores. Chung-ho Lim, Senior MD at Hyundai department stores said: “Without the support of a tasting promotion, it is not easy to attract customers to a new product like Tams Gold. This is proven by the strong sales result.”

One hundred and fifty copies of Tams Gold posters were also distributed to wholesalers at Garak Market (Korea’s largest wholesale fresh produce market) and other wholesale markets in regional cities. Jeff Scott, Australian Table Grape Association CEO, and Haesook Chung, Austrade Korea Senior Business Development Manager, went to the market and promoted Australian grapes while handing out the posters.

As a result of the re-brand, there was a total of nine media stories published in Australian media outlets and 18 stories in Korean media. Hyundai Department Stores also posted about Tams Gold to the 375,000 followers on their Facebook page.

Social media activity

The Australian Grapes Facebook seasonal campaign ran throughout the peak grape growing season in Australia and finished in May. Over the course of the campaign, the posts were seen over 8.4 million times. The most successful post in May was ‘When your parents ask where all the grapes went…’, which was based on a popular meme. This post was seen by more than 623,000 people, and ‘liked’ more than 500 times.