The Campaign

Taking advantage of the recent marathon boom and capitalizing on Dole’s sponsorship of the Tokyo Marathon, we transformed the market newcomer Lakatan Banana into “The Tokyo Marathon 2011 Banana”, by highlighting that Lakatan Bananas have 1.5 times more Citric Acid, important to sports people, than other bananas sold in Japan. We successfully attracted attention of participating runners and fans through interactive programs that made full use of the Web and Social Media, and thanks to the buzz generated among runners, managed to earn a significant amount of exposure on mass media.

Success of the Campaign

Sales of Lakatan Bananas increased by over 150% year on year, which helped Dole to secure greater shelf space in stores, a key contributor to overall sales success. A higher number of Tokyo Marathon runners completed the whole course, with the completion rate increasing by from 94.5% in 2010 to 97.4% in 2011!

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

Dole announced to the Press the creation of a “Chief Quality Officer” to closely supervise the growing of the special bananas. The ripening bananas were made to ‘listen’ to music selected by research of successful marathoners, publicized through an on-line movie on YouTube. A dedicated website supplemented by Twitter acted as a social media hub to share secrets on completing the marathon. To encourage runners to create buzz among themselves, we distributed over 100,000 bananas at preliminary competitions, sports shops and the course of the Tokyo Marathon. We also created Japan’s first banana vending machine featuring this special banana.