The South African fruit industry has launched a major campaign to support sales of fresh stone fruit, top fruit and grapes in the UK.
The cross-category initiative is a three-way venture between the organisations representing South African deciduous fruit and South African grapes and the South African Government.
It aims to build on the success of a pilot campaign to promote South African plums in the first three months of this year, which saw plums become the fastest growing in fresh produce and the only stone fruit category in value growth.
The campaign will develop the Beautiful Country, Beautiful Fruit creative used to promote plums, with five images of South African fruit featured against striking images of the country.
It will feature a range of promotional activity in stores, including tastings, posters, radio, point-of-sale advertising and competitions to win a holiday to South Africa and tickets to the 2010 World Cup, which is being held in the country.
This will be supported by advertising, advertorial content in retailers’ in-house magazines and websites, as well as public relations activity including celebrity endorsement by Channel 4 chef Sophie Michell and A Place in the Sun’s Jasmine Harman; radio and internet video features; editorial competitions and sampling to the public. A new website supporting the campaign will be launched at www.beautifulcountrybeautifulfruit.com
The programme will begin with South African grapes in November 2009, which will be joined by peaches and nectarines, plums, pears and apples, until the apple season ends in October 2010. Activity will focus on specific times of peak availability of each of the fruits in British retailers.
Stefan Conradie, product manager for the South African stone and top fruit industry said: “We are very pleased to be moving into the second phase of this exciting initiative to raise the profile of South African fresh produce and of South Africa as a tourist destination. We are delighted to link with the grape industry on the campaign and also have the support of the SA Government once again.
“The plum campaign achieved excellent growth for the category and has been used as a model to develop activity for further South African fruits. This is a major opportunity and we are looking forward to attaining similar success for the South African fruits we have added to the new campaign.”
Elaine Alexander, executive director for the South African Table Grape Industry (SATI), said: “We are proud to be joining the Beautiful Country, Beautiful Fruit campaign and look forward to communicating to British shoppers the great taste and diversity of South African grapes.
“Promoting South African grapes alongside stone and top fruit from the country gives South Africa a consistent promotional message for almost 12 months of the year, which is great news for our growers and their retailer customers in the UK.”
