The New Zealand Avocados Growers' Association is making a significant push into the Australian market by using creative techniques and the latest technology to help sell this year's record-breaking New Zealand crop and continue to drive consumption of the popular super fruit.

A new mobile phone application providing recipes is being utilised through Australia and New Zealand's largest online recipe community allrecipes.com.au.

The app is known as the ‘Dinner Spinner' and works by letting the user search for recipes by dish type, ingredient or preparation times.

They can literally shake their mobile phone to bring up a random selection of recipes and avocado recipes are to star as the feature ingredient through December and January, which coincides with the biggest sales time for the fruit.
NZAGA has secured extensive space on the All Recipes website to feature avocado recipes and advertising to in turn drive consumer to the addavavo.com website. Almost three million trays of avocados are expected to be exported to Australia by the end of March.

The NZAGA is currently spending $500,000 on a marketing campaign to persuade Australian consumers to ‘Add An Avo' to their daily diets.

Australians consume about 3.1kg of avocados per capita – significantly more than New Zealanders who eat 1.9kg.
'Australia is our largest avocado export market so it's worth putting in as much effort as possible because New Zealand growers have harvested 20 per cent more Hass avocados this year than ever before,” says NZAGA communications manager Midge Munro.

NZAGA chief executive Jen Scoular says the organisation has run marketing campaigns in Australia for the last three years, but the 2011-12 season has seen the largest commitment of resources.

'In addition to targeting consumers directly, we are advertising in foodie magazines and providing information and recipes to the Australian media which they can use to create stories and help spread the ‘Add An Avo' message.”
'We utilise the marketing material used by the Australian industry during the winter season, so consumers are receiving the consistent ‘Add An Avo' message all year round,” says Jen.