Allowing banana, a common food, to evolve into something more personal and special.

Let us give banana a new value, and transform banana from something “to eat” into something “to communicate one’s feelings with”. This way, we can incite consumers to feel empathy to Dole brand and to initiate an action to buy Dole banana. That is why we developed “BANAPEN”, Japan’s first pen dedicated to writing on bananas, and designed a “Banana Message” campaign, to allow people to send messages to each other, directly written on bananas with BANAPEN.

As the first step, articles were placed on news and curation sites, which became a hot topic and attracted TV coverage. NHK (public broadcaster) and all commercial TV stations in Japan reported the enthusiasm surrounding the BANAPEN and Banana Message. The TV coverage helped further spread the news on-line. Japan’s top YouTuber, HIKAKIN, tried BANAPEN and posted a video, also boosting on-line buzz.

Prior to TOKYO MARATHON, we carried out Dole Banana/BANAPEN sampling in a popular running area near Imperial Palace in central Tokyo and organized a banana message trial event, where many runners wrote their wish, resolution and supporting messages for TOKYO MARATHON on bananas and exchanged them. On the day of TOKYO MARATHON Dole provided 52,000 bananas to 35,000 runners, and that was covered by various media, raising interest of many viewers. A new custom of using bananas to exchange messages with friends and family has been created.

Business impact/Sales

When sales of Dole banana and BANAPEN package started, the dedicated vending machine sold out for over a month. It was so popular that the three-times-a-week restocking was increased to daily, and tickets were distributed at 7:00AM to queueing customers. Sales from the vending machine shot up to 1020% year-on-year.

Change in behaviour

Banana Message attracted strong empathy and became an extremely hot topic, moving many consumers to buy Dole bananas. A new custom of using bananas to communicate feelings has been created.

Images of Banana Message and BANAPEN were actively posted on Twitter and other Social Media, counting 11,000 tweets.

Furthermore, many runners experienced the Banana Message at a running station leading up to TOKYO MARATHON, resulting in many of the 35,000 participating runners seen exchanging messages written on bananas.