South Africa’s top-fruit and stonefruit industry has unveiled details of its winter campaign in the UK, at the beginning of what it expects to be a challenging year.
The activity is the first part of this year’s Beautiful country, beautiful fruit promotion; it will see South African stonefruit promoted in store and in the media, after the coldest December for more than 100 years in Britain and with a strong South African rand and generally tough market conditions predicted to prevail throughout the year.
To date, nine of the UK’s multiple retailers have been involved in the campaign.
Activities include shopper sampling, advertising at the point-of-sale and in- pack information in four million punnets of the fruit in several of the major multiples.
Anton Rabe, executive director of Hortgro Services, the growers’ organisation behind the campaign, said: “A combination of factors, including the strength of the rand and unseasonably high temperatures at source, will make this a particularly testing year for South African exporters. However, as we enter the second full year of our campaign we are feeling upbeat.”
Following a pilot campaign on South African plums in 2009 and the first full cross-category promotion including stone fruit and top fruit, grapes and grapefruit in 2010, Hortgro Services commissioned agri-food consultancy Promar International to carry out an independent review of the rationale and results.
“We were very pleased to see the positive conclusions reached in the Promar report on the campaign,” said Rabe. “It shows that not only is the rationale for carrying outthis promotion in the UK strong, we are also hitting the right targets with our choice of in- store and media activity.”
In-stores, a holiday competition, to ‘Win One of 5 Holidays to South Africa’ will run across the stone and top fruit campaigns.
Spokespeople Sophie Michell and Jasmine Harman are taking part in the campaign for a further year, respectively contributing stone and top fruit recipes and demonstrations; and involvement in a film about the ethical side of the South African fruit business.
The second part of this year’s campaign will focus on top fruit and is scheduled to begin in March. This will include on-pack promotions and sampling of blush pears such as Forelle in stores, and be supported with online, press and outdoor advertising. Public relations activity will be focused on summer snacking opportunities for kids and communication about the best way to eat pears.
South Africa’s Citrus Growers Association also plans to join the promotional campaign for the second season later this year.
