01/18/07 Marketing the Fresh Pear

Marketing the fresh pear. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. One thing Kevin Moffitt is never short on and that is ideas. Moffitt heads up Pear Bureau Northwest and is leading the marketing charge for fresh pears. Their web site is loaded with interesting items and receives large numbers of visitors every year. MOFFITT: We average 54-thousand visits, consumer visits or people visits. I don't know if they are all consumers but we're hoping they will be. 54-thousand visits in October, so if you equate that out to a full year that would be between 500 and 600 thousand visits on our website each year. It's very content rich and consumers are looking for recipes, nutrition and the kids section. Those are the sections of the site that are getting the most attention. For industry people, the web site has a password protected trade section. MOFFITT: One thing to point out in the trade section that I really like is that retailers can go in, look at our POS that's available and they can order it just like you may order books or something online, they have a shopping cart and they can order this information at basically no charge depending on how many they order but it's very easy for them to get information into their stores. Moffitt says it's important to develop effective and innovative ways of reaching the consumer. MOFFITT: We had sampling at Disneyworld and on Disney radio recently and we reached almost 9 million people. Disney tracked that for us, these were women 18 to 34 with kids 6 to 12 years old so it's a very good demographic for us to reach. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.