How Riverview Farms strives to crack the ready meal category

Getting some pork on your fork just got a bit easier thanks to a new ready-to-eat roast pork offering from Riverina-based producer, Riverview Farms.

The Riverview Farms Pork Roast with Crackle product is sold cooked, hot and ready to eat, much like the hot chickens many consumers buy each week. And it’s all part of a highly organised approach to brand marketing for the Australian food brand.

Riverview Farms brand manager, Ashley Hoffmann told CMO that for many Australian consumers, pork has always just been pork, and most couldn’t even name a pork brand. 

“We’re setting out to change that by creating branded products that consumers recognise, value and trust. We are also taking products that Australians know and love and making them taste better – we know they test better because they’re all tested and externally analysed against competing offers before reaching the shelf,” Hoffman said.

The brand is taking a fully integrated approach to its campaign efforts, with the aim of creating a high level of product awareness, while also developing a strong long-term relationship with Australian consumers by telling its brand story as Australian farmers. 

“Our approach has included national television ads, bursting in two weeks on and three weeks off. Awareness activities supported by waves of out of home advertising and in-store activation through sampling, as well as Australian Traffic Network (ATN) sponsorship on metro radio stations to remind grocery shoppers about our product at key times,” Hoffman said.

“We have also focused significantly on building relationships with our target market through an ‘always on’ social strategy, sharing content through scheduled weekly posts, advertisements and alignment with key social influencers.”

Busy lifestyles, evolving consumer tastes and hesitation over how to cook the perfect pork roast are some of the reasons behind the boom in convenient options like this, according to Hoffman.

“The Riverview Farms Pork Deli Roast with Crackle is unique in that its success has relied heavily on raising store conformance. We’ve done a lot of work to ensure stores follow the set preparation and cooking process to achieve a consistent result,” Hoffman continued.

“We have taken a very high-touch approach which includes our frontline sales team to making weekly contact with ranging stores. This has been a key part of supporting this campaign and ensuring that we deliver on our marketing messages.”

Riverview Farms has picked up a swag of food awards. According to Hoffman, the success of the ready-to-go pork shows consumers are excited about products which reduce the complexity and time required to prepare their favourite meals. It belongs to the Rivalea brand family, which owns and manages the entire production cycle of its products, from raising pigs, to processing to distribution, to ensure its quality.

When it comes to the campaign, the brand has measured the effectiveness of marketing activities throughout the campaign and adjusted as needed. 

“As you would expect from a brand in the introduction phase of its lifecycle, we have had to be meticulous in our approach and focus on getting the most out of every marketing dollar spent - so quickly working out whether a particular marketing channel is correlating to a material sales uplift has been a strong metric,” Hoffman said,

“That said, we understand building a strong brand and developing consumer based-brand equity takes time, so our key measures of success right now are interaction, engagement and monitoring the sentiment of shoppers via our online and digital assets like the website, Facebook, Instagram and bloggers.”

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