The call from the Woolworths buyer is the moment every New Zealand food and drink brand works toward. A thousand stores. National distribution. The biggest grocery market in the southern hemisphere. It is an extraordinary milestone.
And then reality sets in.
Because getting on shelf in Australia is not the same as staying there. Retail is brutally fast. If your new range does not hit the velocity targets in those first few months, the review comes early. The competition for shelf space is relentless, consumers are spoilt for choice, and a product that looks great in a pitch can quietly disappear without ever finding its audience.
The brands that win in Australian supermarkets are not just the ones with the best product. They are the ones who show up with a marketing strategy built for this market, the right channels, the right creative approach, and a team who knows exactly how the Australian grocery ecosystem works.
That is where Grapevine comes in.
Grapevine is a specialist FMCG agency, operating across Sydney and Melbourne, that works exclusively with supermarket brands. Every single client we work with is navigating the same world you are, supermarket shelves, ranging reviews, promotional cycles, and the constant pressure to drive consumer demand in a competitive, price-sensitive market.
That focus gives us an intelligence advantage that a generalist agency can’t replicate. We know what is working in the Australian grocery market right now. We know what marketing activities are a waste of money, and how to make a launch count.
Here is something we say often to Kiwi brands who are new to Australia: a thousand Woolworths stores is a numbers game. This is not a market where you can ease in quietly. You need to hit the numbers, reach enough consumers, fast enough, to build the velocity that keeps your buyer happy and the sales data pointed in the right direction.
We build every launch strategy around the work of the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, specifically Byron Sharp’s landmark research in How Brands Grow. The principles are simple and they work. Reach more people, not just the ones most likely to buy. Make your brand easy to think of and easy to find. Build distinctive brand assets so that when a shopper stands in front of that fridge or that shelf, your product is the one they reach for.
What that looks like in practice: your brand visible in the first three seconds of every piece of content. Usage occasions that speak directly to how real Australians will use your product, the office lunch, the study break, the quick dinner for one when the kids are out. An earned media approach that leads with value for the consumer, not an ad that interrupts them. And a smart ad spend behind your best content to amplify it from a few thousand views to a few million.
The defining factor between reaching five thousand people versus five million people is not necessarily the budget… It’s the quality of the creative and the strategy behind how you amplify it.
When we launch a brand in Australian supermarkets, we build around four pillars: social media management, content, influencer partnerships, and paid amplification to create an ecosystem that works to build mental availability in the minds of Aussie shoppers.
Social gives you the always-on presence that keeps your brand visible between the big campaign moments. Content, both high-spec and lo-fi, depending on the channel and the brief, gives the algorithm and the audience something worth watching. Influencer partnerships give you credibility and reach that advertising alone cannot buy. And amplification ensures that when a piece of brand content performs well, we put the budget behind it to push it further.
We also take the buyer seriously. Woolworths and Coles are paying close attention to what their suppliers are doing on social. Look at the last several years of Woolworths Supplier of the Year awards and you will see a pattern: the brands winning them are the ones driving serious social media momentum. That matters to your buyer. It matters at your next ranging review.
Grapevine has a specific track record launching Kiwi brands into the Australian market. Some have come to us directly. Others have arrived through close partnerships with New Zealand agencies who needed a trusted Australian arm on the ground.
When Pic’s launched in Australian supermarkets they needed a local voice that matched the brand’s bold, irreverent personality. Grapevine led the Australian PR and influencer strategy, building relationships with food and lifestyle media, securing quality earned coverage across digital titles, and developing a community of Australian advocates who genuinely champion the product. Pic’s now feels at home on Australian shelves. That doesn’t happen by accident.
We have worked with Fonterra to promote their foodservice dairy products for more than a decade. Operating at Fonterra’s scale requires coordinated campaign delivery across trade PR, industry and performance media with a strategy nimble enough to flex across product lines and seasonal windows. We brought the specialist FMCG depth and operational capacity to deliver consistently at that level.
Through our partnership with a New Zealand-based agency, we delivered the Australian influencer launch strategy for Avalanche Coffee. One product that stood out was the Avalanche at-home bubble tea kit, the first of its kind in Australia, launching into Australian supermarkets at a moment when the format was trending globally. We drove an influencer campaign that went viral on TikTok. The product sold out. We then activated a last-minute PR push to news.com.au, the Daily Mail and Pedestrian to amplify the social momentum into national media coverage. The product sold out again. That year, Avalanche took out a Woolworths Supplier of the Year Award.
Another partnership project, Tom and Luke’s, New Zealand’s beloved snack ball brand, needed to translate its health food credibility into the Australian wellness market. We built the influencer and PR framework for their Australian launch, connecting the brand with fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle creators who could place Tom and Luke’s into the everyday routines of active Australians.
Grapevine managed the organic influencer rollout to support Dairyworks’ Australian retail presence. The focus was building credibility quickly, anchoring a Kiwi dairy brand in the quality and provenance story that resonates strongly with Australian grocery shoppers.
The number of Kiwi brands we have spoken to who have arrived with a great product, a strong supermarket ranging, and a social media presence that doesn’t match their ambition is significant. Content shot in uninspiring settings. Videos that feel nice but reach no one. A strategy built for forty stores that hasn’t been scaled for a thousand.
Getting the creative right, the influencer strategy right, and the amplification right from day one is the difference between building velocity and waiting for a call from the buyer that you don’t want to take.
The best time to build your Australian marketing strategy is before you land on shelf, not after. The brands that win are the ones who come to that install date with a content plan, an influencer burst ready to go, and a social presence that signals to both consumers and their Woolworths buyer that this brand is serious.
If your product is heading to Australian supermarkets, or you have already secured a listing and are trying to figure out what comes next, give us a call – we’re always up for a chat.
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