After a successful six month period of marketing for Australian Bananas, the brand is set for another big push in the second half of 2017. As always, the focus will be on getting the maximum bang for your banana buck. Elisa King explains.
Television
We will run a heavy first burst of TV advertising in late August/early September to kick off the next phase of the campaign.
After three years, our TV commercial is now well established in the market. With this in mind, we will be running a greater proportion of our more cost-efficient 15 second commercials versus 30 second commercials. This cost advantage will allow us to reach a higher proportion of the market (45 per cent versus 35 per cent).
Our TV commercials will run in all major metro markets across high-rating programs like ‘The Block’ on the Nine Network, ‘Australian Survivor’ on the Ten Network and ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ on the Seven Network.
Our ads will also appear in all major regional markets and on pay TV, which now reaches 30 per cent of households nationally.
In total our TV investment represents 42 per cent of our total July-December media investment.
Out of Home posters
We will continue our strong out of home investment during next financial year.
Buses, Retail Digital Poster Panels, Gyms and Large Format Digital Billboards will all feature Bananas advertising over the campaign period from September to the end of November across all national markets.
Retail Digital Poster Panels are a great way to extend our campaign in a highly targeted way. Seventy per cent of our allocated panels in shopping centres are located right in front of supermarkets to prompt customers just before they purchase. These panels are also time-targetted to appear during key snacking and shopping periods. This activity will feature a total of 805 digital panels nationwide.
The bus-side component of our out of home advertising investment will impact even more people on their daily commute. This financial year, we have secured the entire bus-side network throughout the campaign period (versus the 35 per cent we have booked in the past) which will give us a massive presence in the market.
Finally, we will run a specially tailored creative campaign in over 400 gyms nationally. This fitness-focussed campaign will appear on over 975 digital screens as well as over 1800 standard TV screens. We also negotiated 636 cardio screens free of charge, as well as a full page back cover advertisement and a two page editorial in the September/October issue of Fitness First Magazine.
Our Out of Home investment amounts to 28 per cent of our total July-December media
investment.
Online
Our online advertising activity will run from end of August to mid November.
The online campaign will extend the visibility of our 15 and 30 second TV commercials in popular online environments such as premium Catch-up TV.
We will also be running punchy new six second video ads on Youtube and social media platforms. These shorter ads are designed to quickly convey our message, are non-intrusive, and can be placed more frequently at a cheaper cost, ensuring we reach a larger number of online consumers than we have ever been able to before.
We will also reintroduce online display ads to increase our exposure on high-visibility websites.
In total our online investment amounts to eight per cent of our total July-December media
investment.
Cinema
Starting mid September, we will be reintroducing our 15 second commercial to cinema-goers nationally. This will give huge exposure to Australian Bananas beyond the traditional TV audience. And it will do it in shopping centre locations, close to supermarkets.
We are strategically running the cinema campaign during some of the busiest periods for cinema attendance, with our 11 week campaign falling over the October school holidays.
We have secured prime positioning on 785 screens across a wide range of Blockbuster movies such as; Thor: Raganorak, The Emoji Movie, Ninjago: The Lego Movie, Blade Runner 2049, The Kingsman, Captain Underpants and Bad Moms 2.
We will be extending the cinema activity with 15 second animated videos on 216 cinema foyer digital screens. Plus, we have negotiated 61 additional cinema screens and 216 additional portrait digital screens free of charge.
Our cinema investment represents six per cent of our total July-December media investment.
Social Media
The Australian Bananas social media activity is now well established and delivers a huge degree of branding and visibility for us throughout the year.
We will be producing six pieces of video/animated content per month that will be pushed out to our audiences across mobile and desktop social platforms.
As well as our notoriously catchy creative we will have a greater focus on recipes and building partnerships with high profile social media influencers.
Our social activity represents 15 per cent of our total July-December media investment.
Public Relations
We will continue our pro-active approach to PR to help build awareness and positive conversations about Australian Bananas in the media.
Billy Slater has been signed up for another year as an ambassador. He’ll be posting about and promoting Australian Bananas as always!
Dietitian, Susie Burrell, will also continue to be an ambassador, promoting the health benefits of bananas. We’ll be harnessing the audience on Susie’s blog, Shape Me, to further extend the reach of our message.
To stay top of mind with food media, we have created 12 new delicious banana recipes along with some mouthwatering new photography. These will be rolled out in two stages – in September and February – via PR and also on our website.
We have ongoing media monitoring in place so that each time bananas are mentioned we get alerted and can respond to them whether they’re negative, or positive.
Sponsorship and Community Events
This year we are supporting 35 major athletic events (including the Weetbix Kids TRYathlon, Ride to Work Day and the Gatorade Triathalon).
And of course we will continue to support our local grower community events throughout the year.
Our schools program will reach thousands of students around the country, reminding them of the wonderful health benefits of bananas. The idea is to get to them while they’re young and make them banana fans for life!
And talking about starting young, we’ll continue the placement of our branded banana cases
in over 225,000 Bounty Bags going to new mums. It’s a great opportunity to remind them that bananas are a great one handed snack to enjoy while breast-feeding and a great food for babies.
Non-stop activity
This upcoming six-month period promises to be another massive opportunity to build the bananas brand and grow banana sales. Through careful planning and strategic investment, it will be a period of non-stop marketing activity for nature’s non-stop energy snack.