Chilean Stone Fruit Campaign in China Focuses on Health and Beauty

As Chilean suppliers got well into the second half of the export season for nectarines and reached approximately the halfway point of the export season for plums on Feb. 24, representatives from the Stone Fruit Committee of the Chilean Fruit Exporters Association (ASOEX) presented an online overview of the 2020/21 marketing season for Chilean stone fruit in China — including the woman-focused promotional campaign that the committee is running this year.

The bilingual English and Chinese lecture was delivered to more than 1,000 members of Produce Report’s fresh produce industry chat groups in the WeChat messaging app, an audience that includes personnel from companies across China’s fresh fruit supply chain. It was delivered by Charif Christian Carvajal, ASOEX’s marketing director for Europe and Asia, and Alexandre Ouairy, founder and director of Pltfrm, the Shanghai agency heading up digital marketing efforts for Chilean stone fruit in China.

As would be expected by those who follow Chilean fruits in the China market and have seen the success of these products here, the 2020/21 stone fruit season is being supported by a robust promotional campaign funded by the exporters that form the Chilean Stone Fruit Committee.

“As I’ve said many times to my colleagues in China and across the world, a key characteristic of the Chilean fruit industry is that Chile doesn’t just passively export our fresh fruit,” said Carvajal. “We are in fact proactively investing to raise the consumption of our products in different markets, especially China.”

The key visuals used for Chilean stone fruit this season are focused on female consumers, with an empowering health and beauty message. These visuals will be displayed on both offline channels, such as major national supermarkets, hypermarkets and fruit shops, and online channels, including JD Home and Ele.me. The promotional calendar for stone fruit is timed to coincide with International Women’s Day, which, in convenient timing for this woman-centric campaign, is celebrated annually on March 8 during the peak availability of Chilean stone fruit in China.

In general, the various committees of ASOEX have been cooperating with more and more key opinion leaders and other social influencers in recent years during the campaigns for various types of Chilean fruit in China, such as cherries, blueberries, table grapes and, of course, stone fruit. This season’s Chilean stone fruit promotions will especially focus on the social media platform Red, a relatively new service that is growing rapidly in terms of number of users and proving particularly popular with women.

“The target audience for Red is women, which is exactly the main audience we are communicating to about Chilean stone fruit this season,” said Ouairy, who delivered his presentation in Chinese.

In addition to KOLs and other social media promotions, livestreaming will also represent an important component of this year’s promotional efforts in China for Chilean nectarines, plums and sugar plums. Therefore, while in-store retail promotions remain an important part of the promotional mix, this season’s campaign has a strong online element.

“There is an ever-growing diversity of online channels in China,” said Carvajal. “And, especially in the current conditions, online has been a popular channel for the purchase of Chilean fruit in general, including stone fruit. Channels like e-commerce promotions, KOLs and livestreaming give us a lot of tools for targeting our communications, which raises the efficiency of our campaign. Ultimately, that helps us more effectively stimulate awareness and consumption of nectarines, plums and sugar plums in all retail outlets, both online and offline.”

Images: ASOEX