What do you do when your product, the California Avocado, is being outspent by competitors and facing a historic drought, and your go-to rational “foodie” audience isn’t checking labels? You stop making things that look like ads. We took a radical shift in tone and visuals to create work that stood out in the category and created an emotional connection to our customers. Our campaign embraced the California side of our avocados to become something memorable, beautiful and compelling. California is known across the world for its art and creativity, ideal weather and wonderful food. This campaign proved the California Avocado is the perfect symbol of everything the world loves about our state. Because when it comes to being Californian, it’s in our nature.

We’ve always thought growing California Avocados is an art form, so for the launch of the 2016 California Avocado season, we wanted to create work that would make people stop and share. To do that, we commissioned California artist Michael Schwab to create a series of posters that showcase our avocados as a California icon. Each one presents a graphic avocado over a unique California landscape, the same beautiful places across the state where our avocados are grown. The simple, colorful designs are evocative of the produce crates that once dominated California, and they were placed in high-traffic areas designed for people to stop, take a picture and enjoy the view.

Our campaign’s design established a new look for the California Avocado Commission that got people’s attention and made them interested in the brand. Sales from September 2015 to September 2016 increased 20.5% ($131,303,240 to $158,247,065). The average selling price per unit increased 12.4% ($1.05 to $1.18). From November 2015 to October 2016, the number of visits to the site increased 33% (3.67M views).