December to February is a hotbed of celebratory holidays that present perfect opportunities for promotion of Australian grown macadamias. Each year we leverage these occasions to ensure our delicious nut is part of the festive narrative in key markets, engaging our fans with inspiring celebratory content.
Chinese New Year macadamia-style
The Year of the Dog is almost here, and our teams in China, Taiwan and South Korea have a suite of powerful social media activity planned for our fans during the Chinese New Year holiday. You can watch the campaigns unfold by following us on Weibo, our Taiwanese Facebook page and Korean Facebook page.
China
A three-phase approach will see activity rolled out pre, during and post new year.
Tapping into the Chinese tradition of preparing “Nianhuo” (snacks for spring festival), our countdown content will be snack-focused and ask fans to share their festival snack ideas.
On the eve of Chinese New Year, we will share our delicious pot-sticker dumpling recipe and invite fans to reveal their new year dinner plans, for the chance to win a macadamia prize.
The close of the festival will see a shift to health messaging, highlighting the benefits of macadamias as a satiating snack, and a great weight management choice, particularly for those who may have over-indulged during the holiday period.
Taiwan
Our Chinese New Year lead-up will get fans in the mood with content based on the Taiwanese custom of drawing divination sticks to determine one’s fortune before the lunar new year.
The first day of the new year will be marked with a macadamia greeting photo on Facebook, which fans will be encouraged to share with friends and family.
The final phase will invite fans to share their new year dishes, facilitating dialogue around how to incorporate macadamias creatively into celebratory cuisine.
South Korea
A Facebook event will invite fans to share their new year’s resolutions for the chance to win a traditional lucky pocket containing macadamias. Lucky pockets are part of Korea’s lunar new year tradition and are used to store new year money gifted by relatives.
Blogger outreach sparks fabulous festive content
While the northern hemisphere is rugged up against the cold, Australians are sweating it out in summer down under. With the warm weather and longer days coinciding with the Christmas and New Year holiday period, December and January are two of our most popular times for enjoying macadamias.
This time we leveraged this period even further with a highly effective blogger outreach campaign.
Christmas macadamia gift boxes were sent to a selection of influential Australian bloggers, containing macadamias, a nut cracker, macadamia chocolates and Christmas recipes.
The initiative inspired an influx of fabulous new content, including recipes, competitions and craft ideas that we shared on our social media platforms. This messaging was amplified by each of the influencers sharing their content with their own audiences as well, with the activity reaching a total of more than 220,000 people.
Highlights included:
- Macadamia and Vegemite cheese scrolls from Mr & Mrs Romance
- Lime macadamia dip with sweet potato chips and kiwi fruit macadamia coconut French toast from Eat Pray Workout
- Macadamia shortbread from dietitian Simone Austin
- Honey macadamia shortbread from the Bonds blog
- Macadamia Christmas craft ideas from Mother Natured
Our longer-term partnership with blogger Live Love Nourish also generated new content with her recipe for Macadamia cream cheese & smoked salmon canapes proving very popular with fans and featuring in our New Year’s Eve party recipes blog post. This recipe reached more than 63,000 people across the Live Love Nourish platforms alone.
In South Korea, collaborations with a selection of influential food bloggers resulted in new Christmas recipes including Macadamia salmon steaks, Macadamia mac and cheese and Macadamia lollypop cookies, as well as a beauty recipe for Macadamia oil body balm.
Macadamia giveaway drives German fan engagement
Our German Facebook community participated enthusiastically in a Christmas giveaway, with fans offered the chance to win Noan roasted and salted macadamias by answering a simple question. The competition kept fans entertained in the lead up to Christmas, with weekly chances to win.
Japanese fans embrace macadamias for New Year Osechi dishes
In Japan, the New Year is precious time spent eating ‘Osechi’ with family. Osechi are colourful, traditional dishes, containing ingredients that symbolise good fortune. Considered by many to be one of the most important meals of the year, the food is typically prepared prior to 31 December to ensure a restful new year, free from the need to cook.
This year we created some delicious recipe ideas for Osechi dishes using macadamias. Here’s a taste of our Macadamia Osechi menu:
Chopped burdock with macadamias: Burdock represents solid foundation when used in Osechi. Our version uses finely chopped macadamias in place of sesame seeds.
Grilled shrimp with macadamia sauce: Whole shrimp – a symbol of longevity – is grilled and topped with a mix of roasted macadamias, pickles and mayonnaise.
White kinton macadamia: Kuri kinton (candied chestnuts with sweet potato paste) literally means ‘chestnut gold mash’ and symbolises economic fortune and wealth. Usually the sweet potato paste creates the golden colour, but this recipe uses white lupin beans for the paste, combined with whole roasted macadamias.
Macadamia salted bean: Designed to welcome spring, whole macadamia nuts are coated with a mixture of sugar, salt and rice flour, then tinted with red food colouring and lightly fried in oil.
New year blessings in Taiwan
An interactive Facebook event in Taiwan saw fans invited to choose their favourite virtual macadamia gift to see what blessing they receive. There were four ‘gifts’ to choose from, with each delivering a unique blessing for energy, luck, safety or fortune.
Australia Day picnic perfection
Australia’s official national day is always a key occasion to promote Australia’s iconic nut.
Some of the recipes that resulted from the blogger outreach campaign proved to be perfect content for the lead-up to Australia Day, with Macadamia and Vegemite cheese scrolls and Lemon myrtle roasted macadamias the ideal entrée to our main Australia Day content that focused on how to enjoy the perfect Aussie picnic.
Picnics and outdoor entertaining are very popular in Australia, particularly on long summer weekends, so this was an ideal opportunity to further entrench our product in these much-loved Aussie rituals.
On Instagram, our delicious Macadamia damper scored plenty of love, while a lemon myrtle macadamia Australia Day co-promotion with Live Love Nourish and Kakadu Plum Co offered fans the chance to win a macadamia prize.
Australia Day was also promoted in our international markets with consumers asked to nominate what dish they would bring to an Australia Day picnic.
