Why is my banana sponsored?

April 20, 2011

I’m starting a blog about the history, process and interesting nuggets of information about branding. It’s called Why is My Banana Sponsored? So it goes...

This morning I grabbed a banana from the banana bunch and noticed that it was sponsored and branded: “From the creators of Ice Age - Rio, Only In Theaters - chiquita.com/rio. Today, breakfast created an explosion of questions; it is quite significant for me to have any form of intellectual activity before the morning espresso.

When did fruit become an avenue for branding? Are there other unique branded / sponsored goods / services that are out there that I don’t know about?

Some people may find it absurd - even invasive- that a banana could be commercially branded in this way. I found it pretty freaking awesome. Clearly this merited further investigation.

The Chiquita Banana site: http://www.chiquitabananas.com/rio/index-make-your-way-rio-sweepstakes-2011.aspx

“Enter and play for a chance to win a trip to Rio de Janeiro. Just play around with Chiquita® fruit, Rio characters, games, and other stuff on this site, and you'll earn badges that will unlock great prizes, from exclusive ringtones to Chiquita bananas for a year! And one lucky family will win a trip to Rio de Janeiro!”

So it’s a sweepstakes...now I feel like an idiot.

Blog over.

What are the benefits of a sweepstakes? A sweepstakes is a branding tactic, specifically, a form of direct response marketing that draws attention to a product or service. Consumers participate in the sweepstakes and the marketing team behind it gathers priceless data about their demographic and the way they interact with said product or service -- say, a banana.

It turns out that in 1944, Chiquita became the first company to brand a banana, with Miss Chiquita. Following the link leads to a relevant history of musa-promotional stickers and the like. I wonder if Chiquita was also the first to create the little blue circle sticker that we see on every banana?

I did a bit of interweb research and found some examples of companies with famous sponsorships:

§ Pepsi: NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS

§ Coca-Cola: The Olympics, FIFA World Cup, NASCAR, NFL, NBA

§ Jack Links Beef Jerky: World Series of Poker, Magic Mountain

Here are some examples of humans with sponsorships:

§ Tiger Woods: EA Sports, Net Jets, Nike Golf, Tag Heuer, TLC Laser Eyes Centers, Upper Deck

§ Lebron James: Nike, State Farm Insurance, Bing, Sprite, HP

§ Maria Sharapova: Clear, Cole Haan, Evian, Head, Nike, Sony Ericsson, Tiffany and Co., Tag Heuer

Finally, below are examples of poignant celebrity sponsorships/endorsements:

§ Kim Kardashian: Midori and NASCAR (clearly a perfect combo)

§ Mike Tyson: Last Chance For Animals (promoting a vegan diet)

§ Mikhail Gorbachev: Louis Vutton and Pizza Hut (sup)

§ Shaq: Icy Hot

§ The Celebrity Apprentice: 7-Up, Onstar and Australian Gold (what was that last one?)

§ ***This search could go on for hours, but I cant’....

Let’s reflect.

No longer can I look at anything anymore without looking at the label and wondering who or what it is being sponsored by. Researching sponsored athletic organizations provided some pretty amazing results (see MLS or EPL). Promos and sweepstakes are a useful tool to maximize information about customer value by allowing you to get a direct response from a targeted demographic or to attract new users. Bananas are awesome."Musa" is the Latin root for banana.

By Jesse Heller

Edited by Rhett Farinholt