Consumer Public Relations Activities Build Awareness of California Avocado Season

To drive awareness and excitement for the California avocado season, the California Avocado Commission conducted consumer public relations outreach in early April. The season kick-off PR included the distribution of a press release on April 12, plus a mat release that went live on May 11, which is a short feature story designed to read like a newspaper article, making it easy for publications to pick up and run as is.

The press release and mat release both focused on “top five things to know” about in-season California avocados and shared ideas concerning how consumers can maximize their enjoyment of the fruit throughout the season with versatile California avocado recipes and how-to preparation tricks such as CAC’s nick-and-peel method. The press release, which included a quote from CAC’s new Vice president of Marketing Terry Splane, also leveraged the competitive advantage of California avocados as the only locally grown avocado and encouraged consumers to look for California on the label when purchasing the fruit during its exclusive season. To optimize distribution, the press release and mat release were distributed “over the wire” to relevant subscribing journalists and media outlets and was shared in email pitches to targeted local and national consumer media outlets with a focus on food and lifestyle. The Commission also conducted  targeted media outreach designed to raise awareness of the premium quality of California avocados as well as their seasonal availability.

Beyond building awareness concerning the start of the California avocado season, both of the releases also served as an impactful tool to help cultivate media relationships and encourage reporters to keep the fruit top of mind when developing upcoming stories. To date the press release has garnered more than 117 million impressions across more than 120 national and regional outlets including the Associated Press, Bakerfield.com and the Santa Maria Times. The broad distribution of the seasonal kick-off PR helped generate demand for California avocados and built excitement for the locally-grown premium fruit as the industry transitioned into peak season.