A Recap of California Avocado Marketing Performance in Fiscal Year 2020-21

The California Avocado Commission provided its fiscal year 2020-21 marketing performance report, known as the Dashboard, to the Board of Directors in November. The report covers activity in the areas of consumer advertising, social media, consumer public relations, brand advocates, retail and foodservice programs, trade advertising and public relations as well as research highlights. Many of the key performance measures in the Dashboard report use “impressions,” a marketing metric used to quantify the potential views of an advertisement, article or webpage, hearing a radio/audio ad or interacting with a brand or product. In fiscal year 2020-21, California avocado marketing activity garnered more than 1 billion impressions and helped achieve brand awareness of 89% in California.

The consumer advertising campaign “the best avocados have California in them” continued and achieved more than 333 million impressions that also promoted California avocado availability at local retailers. Video advertising was a big part of the media plan, garnering more than 93 million views via digital streaming and 16 million video views on audio platforms.

The California avocado social media program on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest delivered more than 27 million impressions and 2.6 million engagements, with an additional 2.8 million impressions for social posts that also promoted California avocado availability at participating retailers. Another social platform, LinkedIn, targeted a business audience with nearly 1,000 followers and garnered about 500,000 impressions with an active engagement rate of 4%.

CAC’s consumer public relations efforts yielded more than 918 million impressions. At the launch of the California avocado season, the Commission hosted an online cooking class in partnership with celebrity chef Brian Malarkey. Participants for this exclusive event included local, regional and national consumer media, trade media, influencers and retail contacts. Coverage was secured in top-tier outlets, such as MSN, NBC Los Angeles, Patch California, Sunset Magazine and The San Diego Union-Tribune, resulting in more than 157 million impressions.

To celebrate California Avocado Month, the Commission partnered with Modern Luxury’s premium California magazines to host a crowdsourced California Avocado Recipe Contest, which leveraged the trend of cooking and enjoying meals at home. The winning recipe was highlighted in a video featuring chef and wellness influencer Nikki Martin. Media coverage garnered more than 514 million impressions.

California Avocado Month also was celebrated with a local drive-in event where media, influencers and consumers enjoyed the classic family film, Angels in the Outfield. More than 76 million impressions were garnered through local media coverage of the event and via inclusion of California avocado recipes developed for the event by chef E Dubble in a nationally distributed mat release.

This past year, CAC partnered with various brand advocates to develop unique content promoting California avocados on social media and CaliforniaAvocado.com. This program secured more than 131 million impressions during the span of the program. A website contributor program resulted in four new videos and 10 new recipes/article posts for the Commission to share on CaliforniaAvocado.com and social channels. Nearly 34 million additional impressions resulted from ongoing reactive and proactive news bureau media consumer public relations activity.

CAC’s Living Well Brand Advocates program worked with six health and wellness influencers including four registered dietitians. This program, which was detailed in the fall 2021 edition of From the Grove (pages 23-24), garnered 3 million digital and traditional media activations.

The Dashboard report also covered California avocado retail, foodservice and export programs in detail, and more information about California avocado retail and foodservice promotions is included in From the Grove magazine fall 2021 edition (pages 39-41).

The Commission’s retail and foodservice trade advertising programs produced 39 paid print ads with more than 3 million impressions and 810 paid digital ads garnering nearly 32 million impressions. Combined trade advertising and public relations programs yielded nearly 50 million impressions.

More details and examples will be included in the winter edition of From the Grove.