Pear Bureau Northwest aims campaigns to younger consumers

Pears are skewing toward younger consumers and the Pear Bureau Northwest is designing media campaigns to speak to them, says Kevin Moffitt, president and CEO of Pear Bureau Northwest.

“We continue to see the heavy pear users being younger, under 45,” Moffitt said. “Even down to 25 is a pretty heavy concentration of pear users.”

The Pear Bureau Northwest has a new campaign for consumer advertising on social media platforms.

“We have a new agency that's working up some new campaign imagery and it revolves around making different recipes more extraordinary by adding pears,” he said. The bureau will have a fairly robust consumer campaign through Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok.

Younger consumers are embracing pears and using them in new and different ways, Moffitt said.

“We’re going after outlets that can reach that demographic, but we are certainly not ignoring any generation,” Moffitt said.

The Pear Bureau Northwest has in-store promotions, but the group has added a lot of digital advertising.

“Since the pandemic, we have really shifted to more sponsored search and banner ads,” Moffitt said. The group has also increased “shoppable” digital ads on retail online platforms such as korger.com or Instacart. The ads could feature two or three branded items.

“We’ve had some good response to partnerships with Pillsbury and Dole salads, and will expand those kinds of partnerships,” Moffitt said.

Shoppable ads allow consumers to press a button and have multiple items from the ad to be deposited in their online cart for purchase.

“We try to make sure we're still visible when people are not necessarily [inside a store],” he said. “Pears are still a high impulse item, so these sponsored searches and shoppable ads, and working with big name brands, helps keep pears in front of people to get that impulse sale.”

The group also offers retailers in-store merchandising options that include bins with a QR code that takes shoppers to a series of "meet the grower" videos, Moffitt said.

Ripe appeal

Many pear marketers have ethylene ripening programs, and that trend continues to increase. Moffitt said there is an opportunity to expand ripening programs beyond the green d’anjou and to the red d’anjou.

Consumers enjoy pears when they are close to ripe. And one of the long-term goals of Pear Bureau Northwest is to support efforts to use pears for sliced fruit. Part of that could mean using an anti-browning solution on pears.

“We are working with Natureseal and some wholesalers trying to come up with the best formula for pears,” he said. There have been some successes, especially in the foodservice space. 

“We're working with some wholesalers that have school customers, and we're hoping to get some (sliced pears) to the schools first, before we try to roll it out into any kind of retail program,” Moffitt said.