Italian brand Val Venosta wants to change the way people choose the apples they buy. Instead of basing their decision on price or simply habit, the company wants more shoppers to select their favourite apple according to taste – much as they would with a fine wine.
With that in mind, the brand’s owner VIP is launching a new campaign entitled ‘Val Venosta: an explosion of flavours’. It features a new video advertisement that underlines the broad range of different tastes on offer within its basket of apple varieties.
VIP wants consumers to value its products in emotional rather than technical terms, in a similar manner to the way wines are considered. It also wants distribution partners to emphasise the products’ qualities differently, and help their customers find the right apple for them.
“Apples are unique fruits that are, however, often presented to clients in a trivial and simple way,” explains VIP’s CEO Martin Pinzger. “Every single variety has its own specific characteristics.”
With so many more varieties of apple on offer these days, more needs to be done to target the right products at the right consumer, he suggests. “Due to the enlargement of our assortment we have to address the consumer in an innovative way with a new approach that also includes our retail partners.”
Complicated category
Apples can contain up to 300 different aromas, making it a complicated category to sell. But for Fabio Zanesco, VIP’s sales and marketing manager, that diversity also constitutes a big opportunity.
“We have to start with the basic values and communicate to the consumers that,” he comments. “The apples’ variety in terms of taste and consistency is completed by an immense aromatic diversity. All this, however, has been valued far too little so far.”
He continues: “The apple is in fact one of the most undervalued agricultural products from an organoleptic point of view. This is why we decided to take an initiative that marks a change by offering an instrument for a new and more appropriate perception of the apple.”
Benjamin Laimer, VIP’s head of marketing, says a huge amount of thought has gone into the new strategy. The group worked with sensory scientists in Switzerland to analyse the different flavours in each of the apple varieties it sells.
Then, having used that research to produce a set of accurate product descriptions, it set about photographing and recording videos of each variety that could be used to convey those intrinsic qualities.
“All of these elements guaranteed a 360-degree presentation of the apple,” says Laimer. “We can thus best support the consumers in the selection of their favourite varieties.”
