Thank you, ladies, gentleman. Okay….Chiquita vs. Dole?
People…. c’mon, this is the “to-may-to’s” taking on the “to-mah-to’s” … except it’s bananas. There’s no difference here. And forget about using that tired old “loaded with potassium” crap. People don’t care. Chiquita needs a messaging platform people care about. One that gives Chiquita a point of difference.
So … check this out:
“Chiquita Tarantula-Free Bananas.”
Now if you can just hold your applause till the end of my presentation…let’s just jump into it, shall we? Tarantula-free is, in fact, a strong position. So strong it even lets us toss in that boring potassium message.
“All The Potassium. None of the Tarantulas.”
It holds together, which isn’t surprising really. We’re simply leveraging that consumer truth we’ve all heard, those stories about tarantulas hiding in banana bunches. One web site says, “… when bananas were transported as large bunches, tarantulas were accidentally imported. Now that bananas are shipped in small bunches, encounters are more rare.”
“Encounters are more rare”? Did anyone tell John Q. Public they’re more rare? I sure didn’t.
So, perhaps we start off our campaign by going online into all the banana chat rooms and wondering aloud….“So, if Dole bananas ever seem to cost less, will anybody stop to think maybe it’s because DOLE IS STILL SHIPPIN’ BANANAS IN HUGE TARANTULA-ENGORGED BUNCHES????”
And just before we log off from the chat rooms, we’ll post this baby.
Ouch, another point for Chiquita. You know what else we could do? We’ll create this adorable little spokes-arachnid thingie, named “Harry” Tarantula, okay? And he’s all sad ☹ and homeless because he can’t live in Chiquita bananas anymore now that they kicked him out.
We could also follow up with a Chiquita app. We’ll call it “Hey Mr. Tally Man, Tally Me Tarantulas.” Just point an iPhone at a bunch of Dole bananas and it tells the shopper the estimated number of tarantulas she can expect to join her at dinner.
Meanwhile, over at the Chiquita display, there’s a computer chip playin’ a new version of that old song “Yes, We Have No Tarantulas.”
Chiquita people, I’m telling you, the tarantula angle is just lyin’ there, unused. Let’s get in front of this story, people. Thanks for listening. Feel free to email me at this address. We’ll bang out the compensation agreement and get goin’.
You know, I’m half-serious here folks. If this idea didn’t skeeve out Chiquita’s main banana-buying customer (which I’m guessing that includes a lot of women) I’d say this campaign is actually a pretty interesting idea. Unfortunately, it makes the cardinal mistake of pairing gross imagery with food. But dammit, … if it didn’t … it woulda been cool, okay?
Some great ideas can often look kinda stupid from the curb. But over the years, I’ve found that any idea that makes you ask, “We couldn’t do this, could we?” is oftentimes a pretty good idea. Another good question to ask is, “Will people talk about this idea if we do it?”
Alex Bogusky once said, “If you’re about to spend advertising dollars on a campaign and you can’t imagine that anybody is going to write about it or talk about it, you might want to rethink it.”
(Although, I’m pretty sure when Alex said it, he wasn’t thinking about a campaign as stupid as “Tarantula-Free Bananas.”)
