The last quarter has been a pivotal period for Australian Avocados, with the launch of the new ‘Smash an Avo’ campaign in April.
Following an extensive process, new creative and a new logo were developed, under the over-arching theme “Avocados make everything better – Smash an Avo”. We wanted to ensure we used media to our advantage with our new campaign, so we used high impact media formats such as television and Out of Home (OOH) initially, to establish visibility with a broad audience quickly. More details about this, as well as the rest of the avocados activity that occurred, below.

Television

The Australian Avocados television campaign launched on the 29 April, and was on screens nationwide for four weeks. The goal for this campaign was for 40% of our target audience (grocery buyers aged 25-54) to see the ad at least two times in this period. We achieved this goal in all metro and regional markets except for Sydney, where we were below the tolerance by 0.7%. During this period, the ad was in seven out of the top 10 most watched programs, including The Voice and MasterChef. We underpinned these key programming by appearing within consistently rating programs such as news, current affairs shows, Family Feud and The Project.
If you would like to view the ad, you can find it here – https://bit.ly/2tzpFFt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mumbrella ad of the month award

Each month, the marketing industry publication, Mumbrella, nominates a number of television ads that are up for ‘ad of the month’. For the month of May, they put forward the Australian Avocados ad as a nominee, up against Hahn, McDonalds and Ebay, with readers voting in a poll to determine the winner. The Australian Avocados ad resonated most, winning the title of ‘ad of the month’, which is an amazing achievement when considered the calibre (and marketing budgets) of the other nominees! Comments included that it was an “original advertisement which is really entertaining” saying it is nice to “see marketing hitting the mark”. Read the article here – https://bit.ly/2xFq39V.

Digital

In addition to the television activity, we also had eight weeks of digital activity that ran from 29 April to 23 June. We had standard video ads, six-second YouTube ads, and 15-second Spotify audio ads. All facets of our digital campaign achieved an above-benchmark result during this period. We finished with an overall Completion rate and Viewability of 84% and 79% respectively for the video component. Spotify had an audio completion rate of 91% across 190,000+ impressions and impressively YouTube served 4,547,000+ impressions with a 92% completion rate and 95% Viewability score. This campaign has delivered well beyond its designated benchmarks through careful planning and optimisation of sites, and weighting to current events such as popular catch up television shows such as My Kitchen Rules, Love Island and MasterChef, as well as live events such as NRL which is now being broadcast live and free on the 9Now app.

Definition of some common digital terms
Completion Rate – The percentage of all video ads that play through their entire duration to completion. Calculated as complete video plays divided by ads served.
Viewability – An online advertising metric that aims to track only impressions that can actually be seen by users. For example, if an ad is loaded at the bottom of a webpage but a user doesn’t scroll down far enough to see it, that impression would not be deemed viewable.
Impression – An impression is the display of an ad to a user while viewing a web page. If a single web page contains multiple advertisements from one advertiser, one impression is counted for each ad displayed.

OOH Retail

Out of Home (OOH) digital shopping centre screens are the last form of advertising to communicate to the shopper before the purchasing decision is made. This form of advertising reinforces the message in consumers’ minds and helps to drive action before consumers enter the grocery store. The OOH activity included three pieces of creative featuring three different meal ideas being run on television screens located at select shopping centres across Australia to inspire consumers while grocery shopping.
Australian Avocados were on 786 screens nationwide from 29 April until 9 June, across both a variety of shopping centres (through Val Morgan Outdoor) and Westfield shopping centres.
The reach of this activity was huge; the Val Morgan outdoor activity reached 6,023,080 people an average of 10.5 times, while the Westfield activity reached 5,409,000 people an average of 10.5 times. The Westfield activity was targeted towards more affluent centres, while the Val Morgan activity uses class-leading real-time audience technology, which uses facial recognition software and audience metrics devices measuring those viewing content based on their age and gender and can serve ads accordingly. This means that the ad was only shown when the majority of people walking by and viewing the ad were in our target demographic – pretty amazing technology!

 

 

 

 

 

 

OOH Gyms

To drive frequency, we extended our screen reach into both Anytime Fitness and Fitness First gyms. On average Anytime Fitness members attend the gym 3.4 times a week, and spent an average of 80 minutes there. We had 260 Portrait Screens + 600 Landscape TVs reaching 726,643 unique gym users across June. As a bonus, we also received a recipe in the June Anytime Fitness EDM which links directly through to the Australian Avocados consumer-facing website.
Across Fitness First gyms, we had 1,822 Landscape TVs, reaching 1,223,400 unique gym users across June. We also received bonus activity for this element; a full-page ad in the July/August issue of the Fitness First magazine and a one-page editorial piece on why avocados are a necessity not a luxury in your nutrition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Media

Social Media remains an integral part of the media mix. Remaining ‘always on’, it ensures avocados are top of mind year-round. Each month, we reach more than 500,000 consumers with avocado content. During the last few months, our new recipe content, in particular, has proved very popular; it’s very encouraging to see consumers trialling avocados in ways they wouldn’t have previously, such as the Avocado Cheesecake (below).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posting recipe content from the Australian Avocados website, combined with the launch of the new campaign, has seen a huge increase in visits to the website. There were more than 35,000 visits to the website in May alone, and increase of 29% from the previous highest month.

Myfoodbook

The Australian Avocados subscription with Myfoodbook has been active since November 2017. In that time, Australian Avocado recipes have been viewed nearly 140,000 times. Video content has also been created and shared, with 38,600 views so far, with more video content to come! Avocado recipes have also been featured in the ‘Good for you’ foodbook, which has been downloaded over 11,000 times, and will be featured in the ‘Around the World’ foodbook launching in August. Find all the recipe content and cookbooks at www.myfoodbook.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the marketing program

See the latest marketing activity that’s helping Aussie consumers connect with (and eat!) Australian avocados. The industry’s marketing is managed by Hort Innovation and funded by the avocado marketing levy. Hort Innovation develops consumer-focused promotions using a variety of mediums including social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube as well as targeted partnerships with consumer-related publications and platforms.

This update was provided by Hort Innovation for the Autumn 2018 edition of Talking Avocados.