The Kiwi Calamity

Kiwis might be juicy, nutritious, and delicious. But I never knew those little fuzzy-on-the-outside, green-on-the-inside fruits could cause nightmares and worry — at least not until shortly before the 2008 United Fresh produce show in Las Vegas.

To draw traffic to my company’s booth and highlight our food-packaging products and services, I developed a multi-component pre-show marketing campaign. Tactics included sending a pre-show postcard mailer to pre-registered attendees, reusing the same postcard as a tipped-in advertisement in an industry publication distributed at the show, and using the same images from the mailer as part of a full-page ad in another trade magazine. Plus, we planned to reuse the mailer’s images throughout an ongoing ad campaign unrelated to the show.

I began the creative process with the direct-mail piece and selected eye-catching images of three different types of produce — kiwis, tomatoes, and a fruit cup — to serve as its focal point. The kiwi image featured several pieces of the fruit housed in our packaging, which identified one of our clients, a kiwi producer. Each image appeared as a 1-inch circle on the postcard along with text describing our food-packaging equipment and urging attendees to bring the mailer to our booth to become eligible for a $500 gift certificate for some Omaha Steaks.

But when our kiwi-producing client received his pre-show postcard, he was livid over the kiwi image featuring his fruit. The wide crop of our photo showed the carton of an unrelated product in the background behind the kiwis. For some reason the client thought the extraneous carton behind his fruit was unacceptable and somehow detracted from his kiwis. But when I spoke to him on the phone, he agreed that if we would get rid of the excess carton, using his kiwis in the photo was fine with him.

Wanting to keep the client happy, I simply redesigned the mailer with a tighter crop on the kiwis for the next two steps in our campaign. So with a couple of weeks to go before the show, everything was ready. Complete with the newly cropped kiwi image, my tipped-in mailer was snugly in place in the magazines that would be distributed at the show, and the magazine featuring my ad had just shipped to subscribers.

However, just when I thought my kiwi issues were laid to rest, the real trouble began. When the kiwi producer received his copy of the trade publication with the full-page ad roughly a week before the show, he hit the roof — again. While I still don’t understand the reason for his uproar, it seems that his initial verbal approval for the use of the cropped photos had evaporated. He told my boss, who told me, that under no circumstances should the kiwi photo be used.

Wanting to placate the client, I had the kiwi photo removed from all future print ads, and I figured that would be the end of it. But the Saturday night before the show, I suddenly realized that the offending kiwi photo would rear its juicy, green head once again. Somehow I’d forgotten that the kiwi image was still on the postcard that had been tipped into the trade publication that would be distributed at the show.

I was hit by a moment of panic when I realized the controversial kiwi image would surface yet again. After all, what could I do now? The postcard had already been printed, inserted into the magazine, and shipped to the show. Nevertheless, the client — and my boss — simply didn’t care. If that dreaded kiwi photo appeared on the tipped-in postcard, I would be up Kiwi Creek without a paddle.

After my panic attack settled, I took a deep breath and tried to come up with a solution to what I thought, deep down, was an unsolvable problem. I started brainstorming ways to eliminate the offending kiwi image or at least to keep everyone at United Fresh from seeing it.

My first option was to somehow get a hold of all of the magazines and rip out our postcard. However, doing so would ruin our marketing strategy and waste the extensive time, effort, and money we’d spent on the show.

My second option was to find a way to cover the kiwis on the postcard. While this also seemed like a daunting task, and one I wasn’t sure I could accomplish before the show opened, at least it kept our marketing plans in play.

So I measured the kiwi portion of the postcard and had our in-house designers create a new photo of some grapes. We then printed this photo on stickers that were just the right size to cover those blasted kiwis. Luckily for me, the fix only cost $400. However, my real obstacle was time, as I somehow had to gain access to the magazines and affix stickers to 4,000 tipped-in postcards.

I began by calling my rep at the magazine that would be distributed at the show. While she surely thought I was crazy for what I wanted to do, she sympathized with my predicament and told me she could get me access to the magazines the day before the show opened. From there, she said, what I did with my postcards was my business.

So rather than flying out to the show when I’d originally planned, I packed up my new stickers and caught an earlier flight to Vegas in time to start my cover-up project. Once at the show site, my magazine rep took me to the room housing
the publications. With a mountain of 4,000 magazines in front of me, I opened the first box and started affixing the grape stickers to the postcards. My rep helped for a few hours, but in the end, I spent eight hours bent over a table applying postcard cover up. When the day was done, I retired to my room hoping to get some rest before the show began.

But when I got up in the morning, my rep at the trade publication called to tell me she had found another 200 copies of the magazine that still needed stickers. Grabbing the leftover stickers from the day before, I rushed down to the show hall and stuck my stickers on the final 200 postcards, hiding those kiwis for good just before the show opened at 9 a.m.

While all went well in the booth, and the mailer strategy successfully increased our traffic, the kiwi conundrum was exhausting for everyone involved. And the kicker was, after all of that work, our client never even attended the trade show, so he never would have seen the kiwis — or my 4,000 grape-tastic stickers. However, I learned a valuable lesson in the process: When it comes to finicky clients, verbal consent is never good enough. Always get it in writing, or you’ll inevitably have your own case of sour grapes to deal with.

— Nina Miller, marketing manager, Boston, Massachusetts