The Australian Macadamias global consumer audience has grown substantially in recent years, and while each of our markets has unique cultural and demographic nuances, one of the commonalities shared across the board is a heavily female skewed fan base.
Leveraging occasions and celebrations that speak to this powerful consumer group is an important part of our program, as it embeds our product in the lifestyles of women globally in an engaging and relevant way. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways we’ve been celebrating women – macadamia style – in recent months.
Inaugural International Women’s Day campaign a hit with Chinese fans
International Women’s Day has become a powerful platform to celebrate the multi-faceted achievements of women. This year we incorporated it into our consumer campaign in China for the first time, with strong results.
Our campaign centrepiece offered six lucky Australian Macadamia fans the chance to win a private macadamia degustation at Beijing restaurant Amico BJ (see the event video here), prepared by high profile food blogger, Wayne from Zaoyangfanshu. Wayne is very popular with our target market of young, modern and progressive women, and his social media following of more than 5 million substantially amplified our message.
The campaign, executed via Weibo and WeChat, encouraged Chinese women to take good care of their health, in line with our overarching Chinese brand message of ‘Beauty from the inside out’. Our fans were invited to take a short quiz about their dietary and skin care habits and were gifted a delicious macadamia recipe created by Wayne that was matched to their responses. Those who shared their quiz results were eligible to win the degustation prize.
The major prize was a huge success, with Wayne creating a spectacular eight-course menu, with macadamias featuring in every dish. The winners were delighted to be involved and the evening was captured in this fabulous video, which was then shared across Wayne’s channels as well as our own.
Menu highlights included a macadamia version of the Australian café classic ‘avo toast’ (bite-sized crisp toast with sweet shrimp, ground macadamias and avocado slices), creamed spinach foam made with macadamia milk, Hokkaido scallops paired with smoked salmon, roasted macadamia nuts and melon, and tiramisu with candied macadamias.
All campaign targets were exceeded, with thousands of engagements achieved across Australian Macadamias’ and Wayne’s social media channels, and more than 800,000 impressions generated collectively across Weibo and WeChat.
Celebrating singles on White Day
While markets such as Australia restrict their celebration of love to Valentine’s Day, in some Asian markets, there are multiple love-themed days of celebration throughout the year.
White Day is popular in many markets, following on a month after Valentine’s Day. While Valentine’s Day is celebrated by women giving gifts to men (typically chocolate), White Day sees the men doing the gift-giving, in a tradition that originated in Japan.
To engage our younger female audience in South Korea, this year we celebrated White Day with a twist, inviting single women to tag their single friends on our Facebook page for the chance to win delicious macadamia prizes. Our messaging led with the humorous theme “Let macadamias keep you company this White Day!” which resonated strongly with fans. “I’ll be so happy to spend my lonely White Day with healthy macadamias!” said one fan. “It’s better to be single – I don’t have to share my macadamias with anyone,” commented another.
In Taiwan, we encouraged fans to declare their love on our Facebook page on White Day, and we also shared our best recipes for those wanting to celebrate their love in macadamia style, with the activity reaching 24,000 people. It seems many fans were keen to include macadamias in their messages of love to their partners “Even you’re now far away, I still love you. Let’s have macadamias together and happy White Day!” said one fan.
Mother’s Day with macadamias
Rounding out our recent celebration of women is Mothers’ Day. Always a strong promotional opportunity for our product, this year we shared Mother’s Day content in all markets, including recipes, health and beauty information and competitions.
AUSTRALIA: Fans were treated to our new recipe for macadamia filled pastry roses, which quickly proved popular on Facebook. We also leveraged our ongoing collaboration with popular Australian blogger and nutritionist Live Love Nourish who created an exclusive Mother’s Day recipe for macadamia scones with jam and macadamia cream, complete with a fabulous ‘how to make’ video. This content was shared across our own channels and those of Live Love Nourish and was promoted as a great Mother’s Day idea for vegan, grain-free and dairy-free mums.
Continuing with the scone theme, we also published a new blog post explaining Continuing with the scone theme, we also published a new blog post explaining how to make the perfect scone for mum, with macadamias adding a touch of luxury to a classic recipe. The was promoted in our consumer e-newsletter.
GERMANY: The macadamia pastry roses and scone inspiration were a hit in this market as well. We also shared a delicious Mother’s Day recipe for macadamia and pomegranate cake from popular German blog Kuechensprint.
JAPAN: Our campaign focused on macadamias as a beautiful gift for mum – one that will make her healthy and beautiful inside and out. Our Mother’s Day blog post outlined the key health benefits of macadamias, and referenced recent Japanese research that revealed “handmade dishes or cake or anything handmade by kids” as one of the most popular gifts with mothers. To leverage this, we encouraged fans to think beyond flowers for Mother’s Day and suggested some delicious and healthy macadamia recipes as the perfect gift, paired with a macadamia hand cream or beauty oil.
TAIWAN AND SOUTH KOREA: We once again tapped into our fans’ love of interactive games with fun Mother’s Day Macadamia Facebook games. In Taiwan, consumers were invited to share a message of love for their mother for the chance to win a macadamia prize, while in South Korea, fans were asked to pick their favourite Mother’s Day gift to be in the running for a prize.
