The Fruit Growers News

He walked up the aisle to the microphone and told 800 Washington apple industry people: “I want sex.”

The occasion was the Feb. 5 Tree Fruit Summit at the Wenatchee Convention Center, a meeting that, taken in the context of the same kind of event a few days earlier in Yakima, had all the markings of history in the making.

Washington has endured three years of mostly poor markets that have brought the state’s apple industry to the brink of collapse, despite the fact that apples continued to sell steadily at record prices on the retail level. The two summits were a call for concerted action – seven hours of venting opinions about where the industry had gone wrong, and how the situation could be turned around. Topic by topic, seven points came under scrutiny.

It was when the discussion focused on apple marketing imagery that the fellow in the peach-colored shirt demanded sex, after introducing himself as a grower from Entiat. “I want sex, sex sells.” He spoke with a passion.

By the time he had outlined his way of thinking – “sell the sizzle, not the steak” – and had proposed to enlist someone like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera for apple promotions – “make apples sexy and cool, and you can’t produce enough apples” – most everyone in the room was cheering him on.

“Did you see Britney Spears at the Super Bowl half-time show? Don’t tell me that child couldn’t sell apples,” he proclaimed, to more applause. He wrapped up with a poetic pitch: “Washington apples, you can slice ‘em, you can dice’em, you can cake ‘em, you can bake ‘em, you can dip ‘em, you can sip ‘em, you can dash ‘em, you can mash ‘em...”

Before the end of the summit he was referred to as Mister Sizzle, so well did his ideas resonate in this crowd of growers, a lot of whom were asking, who is this guy? Greg Becker is his name, and retail fashion business used to be his game down in Northern California, he said in an interview the day after the summit.

Reared on a 100-acre raspberry farm by Boring, Ore., he got into the fashion industry at 20. Sales, he found, put him into the people business. You have to be on the floor to know the needs of the customers. When you’re selling you’re really in show business. The basic consumer question is always the same, “What’s in it for me?” The best answer to that is glamour, immortality, hipness, “all the things that make people feel good,” Becker emphasizes.

His career in the fashion industry ended up with him a partner and the CEO of a 29-store men’s fashion chain based in Eureka, Calif. Eventually he began to suffer the can’t-take-the-farm-out-of-the-boy syndrome, and sold his interest in the clothing business in 1987, at 37.

“I then farmed with my folks for four years.” Raspberries, he explains, “are nothing like apples.” There’s pruning to be done but it’s merely cutting the old canes. For training the plants, “you simply take the new growth the plant had initiated the previous year, bundle it and tie it up.” It’s low input farming since raspberries don’t require much fertilizer and besides a dormant oil spray there’s little else needed, because pest and disease pressure is usually low. And harvest is by machine, the equipment similar to grape harvesters.

After falling in love with a lady from North Central Washington, Becker moved to Entiat where he purchased 15 apple acres in 1994. His idea was “to enjoy being a producer,” and realize enough farm income to where he could let his nest egg investments ride.

For the first three years that ploy worked great. The orchard was already diversified and modernized when he bought it, Becker notes. The plantings were high density, the production nicely diversified with Gala, Fuji, Braeburn, and Golden varietals; the few Red rows remaining he’s grafting to Cameo. But then the apple gloom began to descend on the industry, and Becker grew increasingly perturbed by what he perceives as a failure by the apple industry to follow some basic marketing principles. “We have to sell the brain, not the belly,” he puts it. “It’s frustrating to me that we rely on stores to promote our product. You can’t blame the stores for maximizing their profits.”

The steep mark-ups on the retail end show that there’s plenty of money to go around. In order for the apple industry to get a fairer share of profits, “we have to relegate the stores to the role of facilitator by increasing demand for apples ourselves.”

Becker wants growers “to challenge the sheds to educate their sales staff. I think their sales people all should be sent to a Tony Robbins or Andrew Carnegy (motivational) class. It was disappointing that at the summit the sales desks were discussed as though they’re computers. There are people there, and I’d love to see them excited about their job, I want them to go to work in the morning like the troops in the Wizard of Oz on a mission to sell apples for a price where everybody wins.”

Generally, says Becker, there are three kinds of sales people. “The clerk takes orders. The salesperson increases the orders. And the superstar creates the orders.” That’s where Britney Spears comes in, or “a young, hip, sexy star” like her, Becker notes. Getting people to identify an ag product with a star is a winner: “There’s more to it than the primeval motivation of sex. Teenagers want to be cool, they want to belong to a hip group, they want to be associated with a winner.”

Market research has defined why teenagers are prime marketing campaign focus, Becker points out. “American teenagers spend $125 billion a year, and they influence the spending of another $450 billion.” In view of this, consider the Apple Guy promotion that’s cost growers a lot of bucks the last couple of years. “Over there you have the Apple Guy on the scooter,” Becker says. “And over here you have Britney Spears. Who’s going to sell more apples? Duh.”

It’s not like he’s inventing the wheel, he stresses. “The latest Doritos commercial is a fabulous example. All they show is sexy, and product. That’s it. And it works. Just wait till you see the new ‘Got Milk?’ ad in the upcoming Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated, featuring the Brazilian super model Gizelle ‘The Body’ Bunchen. Hey, if the dairy farmers are getting it, why can’t we?”

Becker also thinks that orchardists should be more directly involved in marketing. “There were over 1,000 growers at the (Wenatchee and Yakima) summits. If every one of those growers donated one day a year to promoting apples, that’d be 40 growers a week we could send out to stores. Or they could send the wife, kids, employees. I’m shocked that we have so many attractive gals in this industry who’re not seen by consumers. Send them out with the growers to promote apples, even if they don’t speak English.” He would also like to see apples promoted in fitness centers, in casino guest rooms, at AARP conventions.

Becker sums up that the industry must act quickly. He’s observed how apple prices are coming down in some stores and if that’s a trend it could be devastating, “a slippery slope.” Cutting back on promotion funding now, he says “would be the greatest fallacy. If you do business as usual you’re condemned to the same lousy, usual business.”

Becker concludes that he belongs to the apparent majority of growers who support the formation of an industry-wide co-op.

“As long as it has teeth it has merit, and, the co-op has to control 90 to 95% of the state’s production,” he said. “A co-op can work if we realize that the world is our stage, and the key to success is to sell the sizzle, not the steak. I can’t say this too often.”