Volume 3 | Issue 11 | November/December 2008 en español |
|||||||||||||||||
|
This holiday season, the National Mango Board Members and staff wish you and your family a very joyful and safe holiday season. May the New Year bring you every success and happiness life has to offer. We look forward to serving the mango industry in 2009 and beyond. Click on any underlined text to get more information about that item.
Don’t forget to check out the mango crop forecast. Ecuador and Peru are currently providing information for the forecast. Throughout the year, the NMB works with each producing country to develop projections for volumes and timing for the upcoming crops to help you better manage your mango business. Please note - if you visit the crop forecast frequently, you might find that you need to refresh your page to see the newest crop forecast. This is because the older version is saved your computer’s cache. A click on “refresh page” or “reload page” should bring up the newest crop forecast document.
Our potential to increase mango movement in the United States hinges on our ability to reach consumers and impact their buying behaviors. We talk directly to consumers about mango selection, ripening, cutting and usage ideas. We also enlist the help of retailers, the trade media and foodservice professionals to communicate our messages to their customers. The goal is to reach consumers in as many ways and as often as possible. We measure the results of each part of our marketing program. This tracking process helps us evaluate what’s working well and what needs tweaking, a process that was particularly helpful as we built our 2009 marketing program. You have access to the same information we use to track each program. These reports are always available on mango.org in the Marketing Programs section under the Industry tab. Or, you can just click on the links below! Results for 2008 are still coming in and final versions of these reports for the year will be published in the first quarter of 2009. Consumer Results Tracker Foodservice Results Tracker Trade Media Results Tracker Retail Promotions Results Tracker
IFEC 2008 took place November 3 – 5, 2008 in Cleveland, Ohio. The main goal at IFEC is to meet with foodservice publication editors about their 2009 editorial calendars and suggest where mangos can fit into their plans. The NMB held editor meetings with18 of the 20 foodservice publications in attendance, including Flavor & The Menu, Food Management, and Restaurant Business. The NMB secured commitments for our photography and recipes to be published as well as other opportunities that we’ll pursue throughout 2009. After discussing the new cutting illustrations and yield study, we uncovered several opportunities to post this information on various publications’ web sites. The NMB also sponsored the Chef Showcase: A Taste of Cleveland. Three of the 11 showcase chefs requested to work with fresh mangos in the dish they developed and served at the opening night tasting event. Finally the NMB co-sponsored an Editor Dinner in downtown Cleveland. There were 12 editors in attendance. Mangos were featured throughout the dinner and the editors received small favors, including a cutting mat from NMB.
The Foodservice section of mango.org has been updated. The section now includes cutting and yield information specifically for the foodservice industry, as well as a foodservice recipes database that is growing everyday. Please visit the Foodservice section to see these updates.
The NMB team recently shared our passion for mangos with thousands of dieticians and nutritionists at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (ADA FNCE). Our corner booth location was a popular destination for attendees to pick up healthy recipe ideas, information about cutting, selection and ripening, plus nutrition information about mangos. More than 2,000 recipe cards were distributed, along with more than 2,500 samples of Chef Allen’s Crisp Mango Slaw, which received rave reviews and brought increased traffic to the booth. More than 500 attendees signed up to receive our Let’s Mango e-newsletter, so they can stay up-to-date on all the mango news. In conjunction with the ADA FNCE event, the NMB conducted a very special seminar for members of the ADA Food & Culinary Professionals Practice Group. Our very own Chef Allen Susser, “The Mango Man”, introduced more than 30 influential attendees to the magic of mangos. The focus was on the great variety of results one can achieve by combining various spices with mangos at various levels of ripeness. This was an eye-opening experience for the participants, many of whom were thrilled to learn about these exciting ways to use mangos in their own menus. As an added bonus, one of the attendees, Bonnie Johnson, was so inspired by the demonstration that she shared some of these great ideas on a television segment on KVVU-TV in Las Vegas on Friday, November 7. Bonnie shared her new mango expertise with an audience of more than 15,900 viewers, and many more on the station’s web site.
The NMB, featuring Jango Mango participated in the Marine Corps Marathon on October 25-26, 2008 in Washington, D.C. The team kicked off the marathon weekend with an interview appearance on a local television morning show, which reached nearly 25,000 viewers. Next up was Camp Miles, a day of fun and fitness for kids and their families, featuring a kids run and the ever-popular mascot race with Jango Mango and the other participating mascot characters. The NMB team served up more than 1,200 servings of yummy fresh mango, and drew kids in for activities such as mango coloring, word search and a mango crossword puzzle. Temporary tatoos were a big hit, but Jango Mango was the star of the show. Roughly 7,800 people attended Camp Miles, including a record 2,500 runners. The next day over 22,000 runners participated in the marathon and 10k races. The NMB booth was set up in a prime location with heavy traffic, allowing the team to serve up more than 3,200 fresh mango samples. Particpants picked up brochures, asked questions about mangos and told us how much they LOVE this delicious fruit! Once again, Jango Mango was on hand, and our professional photographer snapped photos of event attendees with Jango. The photos from both days were posted on our web site and those in the photos were handed a card telling them how to view their photo. Click here to check out the 2008 Marine Corps Marathon photos. In addition to our booth and activities at the two-day event, the NMB received additional promotional support on the event’s web site, in the program guide, in the press tent and via banners along the race route.
Since the last issue of the Mango Connection, representatives of the National Mango Board met with mango industry members in Piura, Peru on November 4 and 5; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on November 12; and Nogales, AZ on November 13. The goal of these outreach meetings was to share our 2008 programs and results, and to hear feedback from all industry members to help shape our future direction. We hope that each of you will be able to attend one of our many outreach meetings planned for 2009. As always, dates and details are added to the calendar section of our web site as the outreach meetings are planned and details are available.
If you have attended one of the NMB industry outreach meetings, you know that we kick off each meeting by showing a fun video highlighting results from the previous year. The new video has recently been completed and will be shown throughout 2009. If you’d like a sneak peak at the new industry outreach videos, check it out here in English and here in Spanish.
The NMB’s next board meeting will take place in Puerto Rico during the week of March 23, 2009. More information will be added to the calendar section when it is available. 
| | |||||||||||||||