At the Asia Fruit Congress in Hong Kong, Chile's fresh cherry sector, the leading exporter of this fruit worldwide, officially announced its new promotional campaign.
At 5 million dollars, this initiative becomes the largest promotional campaign carried out by the Chilean fresh fruit export industry for a single fruit in a single market. Its objective is to develop a greater consumption of Chilean cherries, especially given the great growth of production and export of this industry in Chile.
This new campaign was announced by the ASOEX Cherries Committee during the ceremony "Celebrating the Cherries of Chile", held at the IKON Seaview restaurant in Hong Kong. The event was led by former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, as well as Undersecretary of Agriculture Claudio Ternicier, Director of ProChile, Alejandro Buvinic, Director of Direcon, Paulina Nazal; the Chilean Ambassador to China, Jorge Heine; the President of ASOEX, Ronald Bown, and the Chairman of the ASOEX Cherry Committee, Cristián Tagle; and with the massive assistance of Chinese importers, distributors and retailers, as well as representatives of the Chilean industry and media.
In 2016, Chile became China's leading supplier of fresh fruit, for the first time in history; and Ronald Bown, President of ASOEX highlighted this achievement: "Chile is currently the largest supplier of fresh fruit in China, after overtaking Thailand last season. This is a very significant fact, because historically the vast majority of fruit imported by China was supplied by Southeast Asia. "
"Currently, the world's leading exporter of cherries is Chile, and it's also China's main supplier of this fruit. Chilean cherry exports reached about 100 thousand tons, that were destined to the world's markets in 2016. By launching this promotional campaign, we are boosting the consumption export of 120 thousand tons, estimated for the year 2020, "said Cristian Tagle, President of the ASOEX Cherry Committee.
According to former President Frei, the campaign in China will mark a historic achievement. "This campaign is the result of the joint efforts of Chile's private and public sector," he said.
The campaign is carried out through public resources from the Fund for the Promotion of Silvoagropecuarian Exports of the Ministry of Agriculture, which is administered by ProChile, as well as private resources of the cherry exporting industry in Chile.
The campaign
According to his comments to SimFRUIT, Ignacio Caballero, Marketing Manager of ASOEX, the campaign has two specific objectives. "First, it seeks to increase consumption of Chilean cherries in China, especially before and after the Chinese New Year festivities, in order to achieve sustained consumer consumption as our export cherries become available in this important market. The second objective is to position our brand in the minds of consumers in order to associate our brand with the differentiating attributes of our country. "
In relation to the actions, Caballero indicated that in order to achieve these objectives a marketing mix has been planned towards the consumer, with tasting activities in more than 300 sales points for more than 30 days, promotions in E-commerce sites, as well as campaigns in major social networks in China (WeChat and Weibo), advertising in subway stations, residential lifts, cell phone applications, advertising in wholesale markets and launching public relations to attract the attention of consumers.
"This second year the campaign seeks to expand its reach from 37 to 48 cities, and reaching more cities in the interior and up to fifth order (Tier 4 and Tier 5) this time. Its implementation will be from November to February, which is the moment where our cherries are available," said the Marketing Assistant of ASOEX.
Finally, the representative of ASOEX highlighted the achievements of the past promotional campaign (2016-2017), and the challenges presented by this new season 2017-2018. "After our first year with a campaign of this magnitude, we managed to increase the positioning and memory of our brand up to 74%, in addition they are mainly looking for a product based on its color, freshness and flavor. We managed to accelerate consumption by 22% last season by bing able to make them consume 532 grams a week of cherries. In addition, we managed to become the second recognized source for cherries, only behind China, surpassing the United States as the second source, and achieving a better positioning than the other sources. It is important to note that by the time we reach the market in China, we own more than 95% of market share. Therefore, the challenge is great, since we still have to achieve not only an increase in per capita consumption, but also to get new users to consume cherries during their winter, as the projected future volume in the next 5 years is going to be at least 160,000 tons," Caballero said.
Source: simfruit.cl