Michigan Apple Committee unveils all-new fall promotion
Michigan Apple Committee unveils all-new fall promotion
Generation X and millennials are the primary target audiences for the 2015 Michigan Apple Committee fall apple-marketing program. Diane Smith, the executive director of the group, said this fall brings “an online, all-new consumer engagement plan.”
The Michigan Apple Committee has received a USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant that is driving “the fall consumer engagement promotion,” which will end in December after the holiday season. The Detroit office of the international marketing firm Weber Shandwick is working with MAC on the promotion. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram are the primary components of the online effort. Blogs and websites will be lesser parts of the promotion.
In the Lansing, MI, office of the Michigan Apple Committee are Diane Smith, executive director, and Gretchen Mensing, communications and marketing manager.“Take back the fall” is the light-hearted theme of the promotion. Smith said the promotion will gently, good-naturedly prod consumers to think about fall apples over recent, trendy fall culinary options like pumpkin spice drinks.
Being online enables MAC to tie-in promotions with fresh partners, including specific retailers, as well as food processors. Michigan-based Biggby Coffee is among those involved in a fall promotion with MAC.
Smith said the Michigan Apple Committee will engage with retailers in more conventional in-store promotions, which will be designed to fit the retailers’ individual merchandising and consumer advertising approaches.
MAC is devising a 2016 program to extend this crop’s promotion. This 2016 program will promote Michigan apples into the spring, which is an important new twist for the industry.
This fall MAC will continue producing consumer education videos. This series started in the spring with a piece about bees and springtime apple pollination. Michigan State University researchers were involved in producing a second video with a more scientific approach to apple pollination.
This fall will bring videos about the production and scientific side of harvest.
“Consumers are very interested in these things. This is an opportunity for us to communicate with people who are making the purchases,” Smith said.
