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

People today are engaged in speedy digital communication such as SNS and e-mails most of the time, but we took notice of their hidden insight; that they also have a wish to send a heartfelt message in an old-fashioned way, through hand-written letters or notes. This triggered our move to give banana a new value, and transform banana from something “to eat” into something “to communicate one’s feelings with”. This way, we planned to encourage consumers to feel empathy for the Dole brand and to initiate an action to buy Dole banana. This 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.

Using Banana vending machine located in the busy Shibuya district, Tokyo, we sold a package of Dole banana and BANAPEN in limited time/quantity, spreading the news of Japan’s first special-purpose Banana Message pen. Hundreds of people queued including those waiting since midnight, and many people discussed the rare and unique BANAPEN on Twitter and Facebook. Their enthusiasm was covered by TV and also invited coverage by overseas media.

Prior to TOKYO MARATHON, we carried out Dole banana/BANAPEN sampling in a running area near Imperial Palace in Tokyo and organized a Banana Message trial event, where many runners wrote their wish and supporting messages for TOKYO MARATHON on bananas and exchanged them, experiencing the new style of communication.

Business impact/Sales

- The dedicated Dole banana/BANAPEN 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 behavior

- Banana Message attracted empathy and became a 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 SNS, counting 11,000 tweets.

- Many runners experienced the Banana Message at a running station while training for TOKYO MARATHON. As a result, many of the 35,000 participating runners exchanged messages written on bananas.

- Banana Message expanded beyond our original target audience and created a new communication custom, encouraging family and friends to communicate through banana.

We developed “BANAPEN”, Japan’s first special-purpose pen to write directly onto the banana skin.

Using “Banana vending machine” located in Shibuya, Tokyo, we sold Dole banana with a BANAPEN in “limited time/quantity”. Hundreds of people queued, and the enthusiasm invited media coverage as well as Social Media buzz.

The joy of hand-writing a “Banana Message” instantly captured the imagination of Japanese consumers and created tremendous excitement. With this invention, banana has evolved from a simple food to a communication device to share feelings. In Japan, “Banana Message” has become a new communication habit, with families/friends enjoying exchange of messages.

Target audience:

All runners who train to run the TOKYO MARATHON, the biggest marathon event in Japan, and their family and friends.

Approach:

We designed a communication scheme that allows supporters to send a message to participating runners, our main target, to help them complete the race or achieve their best.

But the scheme expanded beyond our original target and started to be used in more ordinary communication unrelated to runners, and many images of elaborate Banana Messages have been posted on Social Media.

Banana is a nutritious fruit everyone is familiar with. However, without clear distinction among brands in terms of taste and nutritious value, consumers have not established a clear standard in selecting banana brands. Making things worse, it is hard to tell one brand from another by the appearance of bananas in the supermarket. Therefore, “how to encourage consumers to choose Dole bananas” has been our long-standing marketing challenge.

Dole Japan, as a leading banana producer, has been sponsoring “TOKYO MARATHON” for the last 9 years following its corporate mission of “contributing to beauty and health”, providing bananas to 35,000 participating runners as nutritious supplement. So far, the company implemented such unique communications as “TOKYO MARATHON SPECIAL BANANA”, “BANANA TROPHY” and “WEARABLE_BANANA” to support runners. In 2017, the 10th year, however, we set out to tackle a new challenge; make spectators as well as runners experience Dole bananas.