Italian apple marketer Consorzio Melinda is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week with a major television advertisement and a consumer competition focusing on 'La Grande Mela' (The Big Apple).
The advertisement, narrated by Italian actress Lella Costa, will be shown on all of Italy's national channels, including Rai and Mediaset, until 14 November.
The 15-second slot shows more than 800 of the company's real apple growers standing together in a field in Melinda's home region of Val di Non to form a big apple visible from the air.
Meanwhile, full-colour advertisements in national newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica will show readers the human apple formation.
Separately, the company has launched a new online competition offering consumers the chance to win one of 70 vouchers worth €50 each and, for two lucky winners, a five-day trip to New York worth some €5,000.
To enter the voucher competition, the general public are invited to visit the Melinda website www.melinda.it and upload birthday wishes to the group.
In order to win the trip to New York, however, consumers must download a special card and collect seven Melinda apple stickers before sending it back to the company.
Luca Granata, managing director of Consorzio Melinda, was in Cape Town earlier this month to talk about branding at the Eurofruit Congress Southern Hemisphere.
'A brand can be very useful because it can be used to convince consumers they are making the right purchasing decision,' he told delegates. 'One in four people in Italy now believe Melinda is a good apple to buy.'
He added: 'For growers, it is not a problem to invest in this kind of activity as long as there is evidence it is paying off. We need to talk to the trade, to retailers and opinion leaders, but above all we have to be speaking constantly to consumers.'
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