Welcome to the Australian Bananas 2020 end of financial year marketing update. 

This activity is managed by Hort Innovation on behalf of the industry and is funded by the banana marketing levy. 

By Tate Connolly, Hort Innovation Marketing Manager 

We’ve closed out year two of three for our ‘Peel Good, Feel Good’ marketing program for Australian Bananas and there’s a lot to feel good about. 

Bananas are still Australia’s number one snack with 91.5% of Australian families buying Bananas.

But Australian Bananas never take that position for granted. 

For over 20 years we’ve been building a brand making bananas famous by making bodies sing. Over the years, we’ve had a lot of success
with the advertising and marketing campaigns. And, our advertising awareness remains strong. In fact, prompted recall is now 45% – up from 40% at the start of the campaign. That means almost half of Aussies now recognise our advertising. 

The media landscape continues to change and as digital media evolves, we’ve stayed one step ahead. Also adapting the marketing plan in line with current events to deliver the best return for our investment. 

Advertising played a key role in driving mass awareness of campaign communications, ensuring key messages for Australian Bananas are established at scale. 

The latest advertising burst started in January and finished up on 30 June.

We appeared in a number of key prime time programming across regional markets as well as Subscription TV and digital channel spots to extend our reach nationally. 

This year, activity was heavily supported by radio advertising. The Australian Bananas’ make your body sing-a-long radio adverts appeared between 27 January and 10 May 2020 across ARN and Nova networks nationally.

The campaign launched with a bang in Sydney as Australian Bananas took over Parramatta train station with a complete ‘Peel Good, Feel Good’ station domination from 27 January – 23 February. 

With gyms and cinemas closing during the media campaign, we pivoted the program into channels that delivered our required reach and cut through.

This meant quickly replanning the campaign from out-of-home channels to channels such as digital and social which saw a surge of consumption.

We continued to hit our demographic by targeting their online viewing habits across the major networks catch up television offerings as well as via contextual sites and app targeting. Australian Bananas have also geographically targeted consumers via mobile advertising to keep the healthy snack top of mind. 

This ensures we are using our budget efficiently to hit the right people at the right time.

Australian Bananas also remained live in the retail landscape for this campaign, in advertising panels adjacent to major and independent stores, driving top of mind awareness through until the end of June.

Campaign Performance to KPIs

The key growth opportunity identified by market research in 2018, at the start of this strategy, was to grow banana consumption with Young Transitionals (Adults under 35 years old) in the mid-morning snack occasion. 

The strategy is designed to reestablish these habits with this audience who were previously consuming bananas more often. It’s a slow burn changing consumer habits, but two years into the strategy Australian Bananas are seeing great results. The average number of buying occasions for this audience were up +7.6% vs. last year.

We also monitor retail sales performance for our core audience of Families with children under 12yrs, since retention of this high value audience also form a key objective of our marketing activities.

Performance for this group remained relatively flat (-1.2%) on average spend occasions. They continue to be an audience with high penetration (96.9%) and average spend per buying occasion.

The Year Ahead

When it comes to long term strategy, it’s important to stay the course to get the best bang for our banana buck.

Our marketing challenge remains the same; How do we continue to demonstrate bananas relevance in the (changing) lives of modern Australian Families (with kids under 12) and Young Transitionals; encouraging habitual banana consumption more often and for more occasions?

We’ll continue with our ‘Peel Good, Feel Good’ messaging to Young Transitional and drive activities which inspire young families with new
usage occasions in their morning routine. Re-expressing bananas health benefits and extending consumption to new occasions where energy now plays a role. 

That said, as has been done in the last few months, it’s important to pivot and adjust the relevance of our message to our consumers as the world around them changes. 

Hence, the following important changes have been made to the plan:
• Paid media investment has been reviewed taking spend out of channels with low footfall such as out of home (billboards, buses, cinema screens)
• The sporting events program has been put on hold and energy has been invested into promoting bananas, recipes and news through
press relations activities
• More focus on digital media which allow us to be flexible and responsive in our message and channel choices.

The future is somewhat uncertain for many Australians but bananas will continue to be a simple way for our nation to Peel Good, Feel Good.