Table grape marketing snapshot - May 2020

Hort Innovation is responsible for investing the table grape marketing levy into a range of activities to drive awareness and consumption, under the Hort Innovation Table Grape Fund.

Read on for a snapshot of how the table grape marketing program will adapt to the new consumer and retail landscape created by COVID-19.

Partnerships

In February 2020, a partnership for Aussie grapes was developed with ex-Master Chef (season 8) winner, Elena Duggan, to create three Australian Grape recipes to share with media to ultimately inspire and educate consumers on different uses and applications for grapes. These recipes included: Grilled Haloumi and Grape Salad with Pistachio Za’atar; Roasted Grape and Ricotta Toast with Walnut Crumble; and Chicken Schnitzel with Grape Slaw.

Elena recently shared the ‘Chicken Schnitzel and Grape Slaw’ recipe across her social channels, encouraging families to make the dish together and to get kids involved with different grape slaw colours. Consumer response and engagement with the post has been extremely positive. The post currently sits at over 1,500 ‘likes’ on Instagram, well above Elena’s average of 800-1000 likes, with many positive comments and people sharing their plan to create the recipe themselves at home.  The recipe has also been shared across the Aussie Grapes Instagram account.

Social media

For social media, there will be a review of messaging and tone to ensure relevance in relation to COVID-19 as well as increasing the frequency of content about the health benefits of table grapes and usage ideas for at home and cooking with kids. Tracking consumer sentiment and engagement across social media channels will continue and responding to any consumer enquiries or concerns with helpful information during this uncertain time will be a priority.

While media outreach has been discontinued due to COVID-19 dominating the media landscape and limited opportunity for media cut through during this time, social media content will be developed in partnership with chef partner, Elena Duggan, with a focus on ‘different’ content such as holding a live Instagram cooking demonstration or a live Q&A session on table grapes recipes, rather than participating in traditional media interviews as originally planned. This new content will be shared across the Table Grapes social channels, as well as Elena’s own channels.

Media farm visit

With the introduction of social distancing and company enforced restrictions on travel prior to imposed Government regulations, all media contacts (both Eastern state based and Western Australian local media) were regretfully unable to attend a WA farm visit scheduled in early March.