Redwood City, CA (December 2, 2010) – This May, ZESPRI® Kiwifruit launched The Great Kiwi Adventure consumer sweepstakes and Kiwi A-Go-Go contest for bloggers. The prize for each competition: one trip for four to New Zealand, including roundtrip airfare to kiwifruit country (Bay of Plenty), seven nights beachfront accommodation, and day trips (ARV $10,000 U.S.).
The sweepstakes and contest closed on October 31st, and this week ZESPRI announced the winners. The sweepstakes winner was selected at random from more than 30,000 entries. From the 50+ bloggers that got creative with kiwi, ZESPRI selected a semi-finalist every month, which narrowed the finalists to six. George Metzger, of Helena, Montana, won the sweepstakes, and Stephanie Rabiner, who blogs as “The Baking Barrister”, won the bloggers’ contest with her
entry, Kiwi Tartlets in Coconut Almond Shells (http://bit.ly/d7x8UL).
Karen Brux, ZESPRI market manager for North America enthused, “The sweepstakes and contest anchored ZESPRI’s second foray into social media marketing. The sweepstakes required entrants to answer three easy questions about kiwifruit nutrition, which helped educate the public about this super fruit. Several retailers got on board to alert customers about the chance to win a trip to New Zealand. Our merchandising team promoted the sweepstakes and contest at demos and events."
The campaign outperformed target metrics, creating an active Facebook community that regularly posts and comments on ZESPRI Kiwifruit content and ZESPRI’s YouTube Channel. Several bloggers contacted ZESPRI through Twitter, which resulted in ZESPRI sponsoring a number of blogger events, which is how “The Baking Barrister” learned of the contest. In the closing weeks of the contest and sweepstakes, tweets mentioning ZESPRI reached more than 100,000 potential viewers. ZESPRI also used social networking tools to give away ZESPRI Spifes and USB drives, and to draw consumers into the New Zealand Kiwifruit conversation.
Source: Zespri Kiwifruit
