Sumo Citrus® Success - Marketer of the Year

Freshmax Wins Marketer of the Year Award 2016 - Sumo Citrus® Brand Awareness Campaign

“Marketing within produce offers so many roads unexplored, I am just pleased to be able to go out there and chase what I am passionate about.” Words from this year’s Marketer of the Year winner, Matthew Crouch – Group Marketing Manager, Freshmax.

The 2015 Sumo Citrus™ campaign delivered the goods for Freshmax, and it was innovative in its design and execution, reaching a diverse audience of more than 1.5 million Australians in just 6 weeks. For those of you that didn’t catch the Finalist showcase, delivered during the tradeshow of this year’s PMA ANZ Fresh Connections Conference, here is a summary of the key innovative features Freshmax adopted:

Unsatisfied with a purely “healthy eating habits” brand message, Crouch took the campaign to consumers on a social issues level, working with Collier Creative to develop a short animation in support of the Bully Zero Australia Foundation

By partnering with Gravia Media, he was also able to turn the usually inaccessibly expensive mainstream media channels to his advantage – running TV and radio campaigns in regional and metro areas across two states

A final and particularly unique piece to the campaign was the delivery of a Food Blogger competition through the engagement of Flourish PR, that not only delivered a complete back catalogue of recipes and ambassadors for the brand but did so at a fraction of the cost such a venture would traditionally incur

“Ready Steady Sumo [the competition] had been an idea of mine for some time” Crouch reflects “but it wasn’t until Lauren [Redpath] and the team at Flourish jumped at it, that it really took off, and they did a superb job!”.

Crouch’s acceptance speech gave recognition to the entire supply chain and encouraged marketing minds across the industry to push harder to explore new and different channels, “There are good ways and bad ways to deliver marketing, the only way to find out which ones work for you, is to try them”.

There are good ways and bad ways to deliver marketing, the only way to find out which ones work for you, is to try them

In his speech, Crouch also paid tribute to their exclusive retail partner, Woolworths.

“Working with Freshmax to help bring Sumo Citrus® Mandarins to the attention of Aussie consumers is really important to Woolworths” says Cara Reynolds, National Buyer at Woolworths. “We enjoy working with Matt and Will [Snell] and love that they keep challenging the norm and exploring different ways to promote this unique and delicious piece of fruit.”

They [Freshmax] keep challenging the norm and exploring different ways to promote.

Sumo Citrus® is a proprietary brand of citrus fruit, the variety originates from Japan and was first commercialised in the US. Freshmax is the sole licensed Marketer for the brand in the AU and NZ markets, and is heavily involved in the management and support of the entire supply chain and grower group. Freshmax is a large Fresh Produce Marketer operating across Australia and New Zealand to deliver quality fresh produce to wholesale, national and international markets.