Festival shines on national stage

By Tania Phillips

Stanthorpe’s Apple and Grape Harvest Festival 2020 shone on the national stage at the 2020 Australian Event Awards, held for Queenslanders at the Victoria Park Golf Complex in Brisbane late last week.

The festivals marketing campaign, run by Krista Hauritz Tourism and Events, took out the Best Achievement in Marketing for the awards held in different locations around Australia and connected virtually.

In the same awards, the Festival was also a national finalist in the ‘Best Tourism Event’ category, with victory going to Splendour in the Grass 2019.

This year’s festival was the first time that Krista Hauritz and her team had partnered with the festival. It also marked the first-time Mrs Hauritz had entered the awards and she described the win as “mind-boggling”.

“We haven’t won – we’ve never even entered before,” an excited Mrs Hauritz, who cut her teeth working with her uncle on the famous Woodville Festival, said.

“It was pretty amazing and I guess being a Covid year events like most industries, have been severely affected. We were just so excited that the awards were going ahead so we entered the work we did with Stanthorpe Apple and Grape Festival.

“On the night we were just so ecstatic to be going to it and to be National finalists. They were announcing all the other finalists including Melbourne City Council and the thought genuinely hadn’t even entered my head that we would win. We’re sitting there and everyone else at the table was saying – Krista – you won you’ve got to get up and give a speech now. It was so very exciting.

She said it was particularly nice to win “because Stanthorpe and the Granite Belt has been to hell and back between the hundred-year drought and fires and then Covid – it was just like what else can you throw at us!”

According to Mrs Hauritz and new Apple and Grape president Russell Wantling, the award has come at a good time for the festival with the volunteer committee now in the planning stages for the 2022 staging of the event and the area also receiving a boost in tourism.

“They’ve had their AGM and their post event, so the current executive stood down so they could mentor new people because they’ve been doing it for many years,” she said.

“I guess the more seniors in the group said hey we need some newcomers coming in, they’ve got a new committee now which is great and all we can do is plan ahead.”

Mr Wantling said it was exciting to see the event win such a prestigious award and they were looking forward to the future.

“It’s fantastic to seem Krista recognized for all the work she and her team did on the last festival, they all work so hard and it’s good to get recognition,” he said.

The group is now hoping to build on this success with a new enthusiastic committee being voted in recently.

“It’s good to get some new people in there, not saying the other blokes haven’t done a really good job, but it’s just always to get some new ideas in there,” he said.

“It’s good we’ve got some new members – I’m only new it myself – we’ll have to see how we’re going.

“We’ve got to get in early because we’ve got a lot to do and a few of us are new to it. We’ve got to get some sponsorship and funding for the next event.”

The Festival has been running since 1966 something that was key to the marketing team’s award-winning strategy.

“Running right through our campaign of print media, TV, radio, social media, publicity, signage and all the rest was a refreshed branding for 2020 and our new slogan ‘Crushing It Since 1966’,” Mrs Hauritz said.

“We felt incredibly privileged to be given the task of marketing Stanthorpe’s long loved festival.”

“The deeper we got in to working with the festival committee, we saw we could deliver so much because the festival committee are one of the most professional committees we have encountered and just such lovely people to work alongside.

“What people don’t see behind the scenes is our marketing effort being supported by a very passionate festival volunteer team and one of the best examples was President Max Hunter handpicking grapes in the rain the day before we were staging a big media event where we had 23 travel writers visiting Stanthorpe to preview the festival fun.

“We needed the grapes for the travel writers and social media influencers to do a grape stomp experience, so Max, together with the help of then Vice President Greg Thouard, Ray Zannata and Sam Costanzo staged a grape stomp at the wine college three weeks before the festival.”