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Our 2008 lamb campaign with Sam Kekovich was the most successful to date according to all major retailers.
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ENTICING CONSUMERS TO RED MEAT
AGGRESSIVE PROMOTION IN THE MARKETPLACE
At home
Effective television commercials popular with consumers, combined with point-of-sale material, promotional publications and public relations campaigns, are just some of the tools used in 2007–08 to drive demand for lamb and beef.
Sam Kekovich returned for the fourth consecutive year to front MLA’s Australia Day lamb campaign, calling for a week- long lamb-a-thon in his trademark tongue-in-cheek address to the nation. The 2008 lamb campaign was the most successful to date with all major retailers reporting further sales growth and that Australia Day week is the biggest sales week of the year. A major component of the promotion was our partnering with Channel 7 during their telecast of the Australian Open Tennis. This generated even more exposure for Sam’s call for all Australians to celebrate with lamb on Australia Day. Overall media coverage has been valued at more than $8 million from our media budget of $850,000. The campaign was recognised as one of the world’s best at the 2008 Cannes International Advertising Awards.
With the onset of winter we launched the new ‘Beef – get into it’ campaign in June 2008. The campaign included television, magazine advertising and editorial, point-of-sale and promotional material such as the popular ENTICE magazine distributed to 800,000 consumers through butcher stores. Designed to broaden consumers’ confidence with cooking a broader range of beef cuts beyond just steak, sausages and mince, the strategy aims to expand mealtime repertoires to include more secondary cuts. Feedback from participating retailers has strongly endorsed the approach with growing consumer interest in cooking from scratch and tightening household budgets.
Overseas
Retail promotions under the industry collaborative agreement (ICA) program were carried out around the globe to drive demand for Australian beef and lamb in our valuable export markets. Industry collaborative agreements leverage investment by individual companies 50:50 with MLA marketing funds to drive sales of Australian red meat in export markets.
Working with exporters and importers, we expanded Aussie Beef’s retail shelf space in Japan during the year and sales increased during three key retail promotions. This was a good result given the higher prices due to a strong Aussie dollar, tight supply and the return of US beef to the market. Christmas, the largest beef sales period for the year in Japan, sawa 30 per cent increase in retail sales of Australian beef and a share of total retail beef sales over Christmas of 63 per cent (Agriculture and Livestock Industries Corporation – ALIC). Another tactical campaign in the lead-up to Father’s Day in mid June, included the participation of 7,000 of Japan’s major supermarkets in Aussie Beef promotions. This resulted in an increase of 26 per cent for Australian Beef retail sales (from the previous week).
Every day of the year an Australian beef promotion is run in a retail outlet in Korea. The 27 participating Korean retail chains achieved an average increase in Australian beef sales of 25 per cent during the promotions. A key feature of our retail promotional program is our ‘army’ of 110 in-store merchandisers, jointly funded by MLA, Australian exporters, Korean importers and retailers. The Hoju Chungjung Woo (‘Australian beef – clean and safe’) merchandisers carried out over 23,000 days of sampling in 750 stores across the nation, educating Korean shoppers about Australia’s world- leading production practices and the best way to cook a range of Australian beef products. This integration of in-store activities has ensured the continued strong awareness of Australia’s beef brand in Korea with 88.8 per cent of Korean consumers recognising the Hoju Chungjung Woo logo— up from 50.7 per cent in 2006–07.
A key focus of our activities in 2007–08 has been in the emerging markets of the Middle East, South East Asia and Europe to position Australian beef and sheepmeat as the dominant imported product and ensure industry is positioned to maximise new market opportunities. We undertook a range of activities, primarily on a co-funded basis with 20 leading retailers in South East Asia and through an industry collaborative agreement with one retailer in Europe, as well as trade education programs focused on using alternative cuts and in-store consumer promotions.
