Despite massive changes taking place in the national apple-marketing arena, it’s business as usual for the country’s apple promoters.
Without the Washington Apple Commission (WAC), growers in Washington will be promoting their own apples—each with a different market strategy.
“You’ll probably see a number of the growers/packers with their sales offices doing their own thing with their particular customers and not relying on the Commission help as they have in the past,” Kenton Kidd, executive director of the California Apple Commission, said. “I don’t see a great deal of difference; we’ll still see stiff competition coming out of Washington. Instead of seeing one large commission coming in and promoting Washington apples, you’ll see different people promoting their own apples.”
“We are going to be looking at upwards of 30 different organizations each trying to market their own particular brand; those 30 organizations are probably going to come out with 30 different approaches,” said Mike Rothwell, president of BelleHarvest Sales Inc. in Belding, Mich. “It will most definitely affect marketing of apples in other states. A lot of these organizations will have the resources to push into our markets if that’s the approach they want to make. One thing we do know is that a lot of the large retailers, when Washington Apple Commission was shut down, indicated that they would look to their current suppliers to perform some of those (marketing) functions. I look for those functions to fall on other organizations.”
The changing marketing practices bring with them questions, which often lead to more questions rather than answers.
“There are so many unknowns,” Don Armock, of River Ridge Produce in Sparta, Mich., said. “We’re going to look at it as providing some opportunities…a lot of times, major changes shake up all the structures that exist and end up—in the long run—being for the best.
“The apple industry will be driven by what has been considered the best practices of the past. Those who are customer-oriented already have those practices in place. They’ll try to drive their business accordingly. I think there will be a chasm in terms of category management. As individual retailers, we will be developing those kinds of programs and find talent to put those departments together,” Armock said.
Other apple promotion associations will remain important in the marketing of apples.
“Apples are good and valuable,” Jim Allen, president of the New York Apple Association (NYAA), said. “I think that the need is just as vital to be interacting with our retailers and our consumers as much as possible.”
Allen said that regardless of the fact that WAC will be operating in a much more limited manner than in the past, the job of apple marketers across the nation remains important. And for NYAA, that means continuing to develop promotional strategies that get the fruit’s name out there.
“Our resources have not changed or increased just because of what happened in Washington,” he said. “It doesn’t allow us to do anything more than we’ve done in the past—we’re going to be just as aggressive as we possibly can and as aggressive as our resources will allow us.”
But, the apple industry may have to wait to see any of these benefits and answer any unknowns.
“It’s going to take a number of seasons for anyone to evaluate the effectiveness of their individual programs,” Rothwell said. “There are so many variables involved that one season is not going to do it. It almost has to run over several seasons to make any kind of analytical judgments.”
