08/15/07 Pear Marketing

Pear Marketing. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Yesterday we talked with Pear Bureau Northwest's International Marketing Manager, Jeff Correa about his presentation at the recent Pre-Harvest Pear Meeting put on by the Growers Clearing House. Correa spent some time talking about the marketing of fresh pears in Mexico. CORREA: The largest market of ours is Mexico. It takes about 45% of all exports, a very diverse market. It has the longest market window where were into that 10 to 11 months out of the year. He says they have had some good results from several unique advertising campaigns. CORREA: The theme and the message of this is kind of a play on words. The images show like a woman on one side and a pear on the other and it's a play on words in how Mexican men would describe a beautiful woman or some other traditional sayings we have in Mexico but also tying into a ripening message or a nice message about pears. Another highly successful marketing area in the U.S. for pears is event driven. CORREA: It's a promotional truck. It drives around and it'll park outside different supermarkets, hypermarkets. (It) kind of opens up and there's a touch screen, video screens, computer screens for consumers to learn more information about the different products we're promoting. They have an emcee that gets the crowd together and gets them interested and they play little games; we have a nutritionist who'll speak on the health benefits of pears, apples and the other fruits and then we have a chef that will be there and he shows different quick and easy recipes. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.