Kok Hwee Ng from Zespri is marketing kiwifruit to the world

It was a true privilege to be able listen to, and be educated by, the presentation from Kok Hwee Ng, Global Marketing Director for Zespri International.  Her talk included examples of marketing campaigns to Asia, which is an increasingly growing and important market for kiwi fruit.  Kok Hwee specifically covered ‘marketing and how it is consumer centric.’   Customer-centric marketing is a strategy that places the individual customer at the centre of marketing design and delivery. It starts from the realization that there is no “average” customer. Customers have different behaviours and preferences – and this presents rich opportunities to move past a “one-size-fits-all” marketing approach.

The main campaign she showed us was the campaign targeting 30 plus year old females in China.  This woman works hard, come’s home and takes care of the ‘well-being’ of the family.  The advertising is trying to empower women and to demonstrate how an ordinary woman can blossom whilst juggling the demands of family and work life.  The Chinese, 30 plus modern women are identified as the decision makers when it comes to purchasing the weekly needs of the family.  While shopping she identifies all of these positive emotions and makes an emotive empowered decision to buy Zespri Kiwifruit.  The results have been undeniably successful, according to the figures presented by Kok Hwee, dramatically increasing the number of kiwi fruit sold to the Chinese market. The psychology involved in a campaign like this is quite astounding.   

In Japan a totally different marketing approach was taken to suit a different culture, by using animation and an iconic Japanese superhero ‘Banana man’ they are able to demonstrate more clearly the benefits of eating kiwifruit to the Japanese market.

Advertising targeted to the Japanese consumer

Independent campaigns are built for the different markets that Zespri export products to.  This cultural awareness is obviously extremely important to keep growing the Zespri brand.  I think Zespri, and their marketing team, should be congratulated, they deserve a lot of gratitude and recognition for continuing to successfully promote the Zespri brand and New Zealand to international markets, especially Asia.   Well done team.

If you are interested check out the approach used to market Zespri kiwifruit in India in 2015.

If you are interested in learning more I recommend the following article: Click on the link below.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11633465

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Article Written by Stefan Vogrincic, Consultant, Grower2Grower