By Fresh Produce Marketing founder Lisa Cork

A few weeks ago I was in Singapore doing some fruit category work for a client. I was at the Paragon Shopping Centre on Orchard Road visiting their upscale little supermarket, when I rode the escalator up to street level to make my escape.

At the top of the stairs, I was greeted with the most stunning display of apples. I thought, "Wait a minute. What's this? Is this a promo for New Zealand apples? Chile? USA?" The simple answer was…nope. Instead, it was a promotion for the newest DKNY fragrance called Delicious. But it gets better.

DKNY’s Delicious series of fragrances are based around…wait for it…the fresh and intoxicating scent of apples. And not just one apple mind you; three different apples. The original scent mimics a green apple, the second scent mimics a golden apple, and the third scent, the newest in the range, mimics the scent of a pink apple.

FYI, from a girl’s point of view the smell is lovely. I particularly liked the golden and the green.

The booth and the whole way they launched the fragrance at the department store was stunning. Huge point of sale (POS) banners featured beautiful young women holding beautiful apples. Every side of the display had cartons with real, live, fresh apples and each side was set up slightly differently.

One side had three crates of apples in a stand vertically stacked. Another side had two crates plus several crates on the floor. Each side was different, but real apples featured strongly.

The best part was, in my opinion, that each apple was stickered with the DKNY Delicious brand. So here were all these visually perfect real apples and most had a big, bold Delicious sticker. Don't you love it?

I thought it was a powerful testimony to apples and how the 'outside world' views our product. DKNY obviously thinks enough about the fresh scent of them to design a three series fragrance offer around the fruit.

They also feel strongly that fresh apples are the anchor point, hence their booth was about both fresh apples and the fragrance.

This brings me to an interesting point. I believe 'outsiders' see our products in a far more positive light than we in the industry do. Do you ever think that?

When I look at grocery packaging, often all I see are beautiful images of real fresh fruits and vegetables being used to sell processed fruit products that only have a smidgen of real fresh produce in them. Why do they use fresh images? Because they sell!

Perhaps in fresh produce we are at a bit of a disadvantage. Because we put a real product into packaging, we tend to use less fresh images because the real product is in the pack. This is one of the reasons why replacing the fresh images others use with powerful and compelling texts or stories is really important.

Fresh produce packaging needs a hook. It needs to woo shoppers and compel them to buy. If we can't do that with images, then we need to do it with key messages and words that sell.

Over to you. Do you think promotions like the DKNY Delicious fragrance promo are helpful to apples or harmful? And, what do you use on your pack in place of a fresh image?

If you would like your packaging to be working harder but not sure where to start, give me a call or drop me an email. A simple packaging review could be all you need or we can explore options for a complete revamp. Contact: Lisa@freshproducemarketing.com or call 64 9 815 5944.

www.freshfruitportal.com