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 something people wouldn’t just notice; it was designed to make them stop and share. We did away with our outdoor media buy and instead focused on beautifying cities across California with avocado murals. We commissioned legendary California artist John Van Hamersveld (creator of the iconic Endless Summer graphic design and poster) to create four unique pieces that pay homage to iconic California locales, the same beautiful places our avocados are grown. Starting in San Fransisco’s SOMA district, we created a mural that wasn’t high up on a billboard; it was on the side of a busy restaurant so people could stop, take a picture and enjoy the view.

Our hand-painted mural earned a combined 9.5M impressions from foot traffic, posts from Instagram influencers and a custom Snapchat filter. The campaign established a new look and approach 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%. The average selling price per unit increased 12.4%, from $1.05 to $1.18.