2011 Pear Marketing

2011 Pear Marketing. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The 2010 pear crop is only 5% away from finishing and the 2011 crop looks to be about 8% larger than last year from initial estimates. So how will that affect the marketing efforts to consumers. Christie Mather, Director of Communications for Pear Bureau Northwest.

MATHER: This year we are ramping up our consumer outreach and advertising. We are embarking on an integrated full consumer campaign that consists of consumer advertising. PR; we’re doing a lot of great media events. We’re doing some consumer events and a consumer contest and all these things still in development right now but we are going to have some fun things to report come a month and a half or so from now.

So we definitely have something to look forward to.

MATHER: I will tell you this, we are getting out there and we’re going to be educating and engaging consumers about pear ripening and recipes. We’re looking forward to really raising awareness of pears and also demystifying some of the common questions consumers have about pears.

I’m always amazed at the many varieties of pears and not sure how they all taste.

MATHER: One of our favorite things to do is to sample a flight of pears if you will. Just like when you go to wine events you taste a flight of wine. We kind of do the same thing with pears and I will tell you that consumers love to have the opportunity to taste those bites of pears side-by-side because they can see how really different they are.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.