Tenley Fitzgerald, vice president of marketing and brand strategy at Yes! Apples, says she's watched the CPG world closely over the last couple of years and has seen an explosion of energy and momentum within the snacking, beverage and other center-store categories.
“And the same thing is not happening as much in produce,” she says. “It is happening a little bit. And it's definitely, in my opinion, not happening in the same way in apples.”
So, when Fitzgerald and the team at Yes! Apples decided to create a new design for the brand, she leaned heavily into the CPG space for ideas.
“If we're all sort of thinking about how we're being competitive and vying for share of stomach — apples, if we want them to have a true seat at the table, they need to be at the level that all of these other players in the CPG space are raising the bar,” she says.
Why Produce Needs a CPG Makeover
CPG brands, Fitzgerald says, do a good job of educating consumers on added benefits and the values of the brands and how they resonate with consumers. Fresh produce and apples have a great opportunity to not only capitalize on the growing interest younger generations have in eating healthy but also how a company's values speak to them.
“There's been such a shift in how they're perceiving the things that they're bringing to their homes,” she says. “They really care. They care in a monumental way that we haven't seen in generations before. And so, [we're] really trying to apply those values, those tactics, those strategies, to a category that has not seen a lot of change in the last several decades.”
She says a big “aha” moment was thinking about how shoppers engage with the category and rethinking how apples should be sold.
“Maybe this confusion itself at shelf, maybe this lack of leveling up and trying new varieties — maybe it's because we're not selling apples the right way,” she says. “This brand reveal is sort of the intersection of those two elements. ... Let's think about how we're educating our consumers. What are we giving them to feel empowered in the aisle at the point of sale? And then, how do we modernize ourselves without losing the nostalgia the apples hold? But how do we modernize ourselves so that we actually have a competitive seat at the table against everything that's happening in this CPG category?”
Digital Success as a Retail Blueprint
Fitzgerald says a lot of the inspiration for this new design came from Yes! Apples' direct-to-consumer online sales. She says, with 41% returning customers and triple-digit year-over-year growth, Yes! Apples' online business provides customer feedback and data. She says the website offers recipes, highlights fruit quality and helps consumers understand exactly what they're buying and how to best use the varieties.
“Not only is it working, but we're getting people to spend more money than they would in-store to buy something that's resonating with them,” she says.
And she sees these learnings as being applicable to retailers thanks to the new branding efforts.
“All we're trying to do here is open distribution, get people thinking differently about apples, making customers feel like, ‘I know what to choose, and I know what to do with it, and I know I'm going to like it,'” she says. “And if retailers see that potential and see the opportunity for us to take a gala buyer and transition them up to a SweeTango buyer, then the proof is in the pudding.”
Heritage Meets High-Design
In the creation of this branding, Fitzgerald says the idea was to pull typography from handwritten farm stand signs, noting the apple category is steeped in culture and history; she says that's exactly what Blurr Bureau, the branding partner, achieved.
“They figured out this intersection of vintage and modern and how to bridge these two worlds, and they did it exceptionally well,” she says. “Not only did you make this brand a real brand — it feels like we could sit on the shelf next to the Chobanis and the Grazas of the world — but also you did it honoring everything that makes apples so special.”
Fitzgerald says she wants retailers to know and understand that Yes! Apples wants to be a strategic partner in helping drive sales, offering curated variety mixes and point-of-sale tools to help manage the category.
“We can be a strategic partner for the retailer in a way that nobody else can, because we have all these marketing elements at our disposal,” she says.
Fitzgerald points to Yes! Apples' strong presence on social media, work with influencers, partnerships and more that really resonate with younger consumers. She says she's in conversations with a retailer about cross-merchandising apples outside of the produce department because of Yes! Apples' partnerships. She says this opens up a world of opportunities beyond just the department.
Engineering a Frictionless Shopping Experience
The new design features nutrition education and varietal guidance in the back-of-pack copy, use-case suggestions to help choose the right variety for eating or cooking, a color palette that stands out in a category known for its reds and greens, nutrition labeling with key attention to fiber and naturally occurring antioxidants and more. Fitzgerald points to Yes! Apples packaging to help create a system to help the produce buyer.
“One thing that we hear from retailers a lot and why they choose private label is because it creates a uniform display on their shelves,” she says. “And I understand the value in that, but I also think that they're doing it in a way that is not honoring the fruit or making it easier for the customer.”
She says with Yes! Apples' packaging, whether it be pouch poly or tote or even bulk, all the elements work together.
“We have to be really creative to think about ways that we can still educate our consumers and get the messaging out there,” she says.
With the new packaging of its bags and totes, Fitzgerald says she took inspiration from Goodles mac and cheese, where the key elements and typography were the same but each flavor featured a different color. Fitzgerald says the color palette came from the different colors found naturally in the orchard, but amplified.
“It's really creating a systemic packaging format that's teaching consumers exactly how to buy your product,” she says.
Partnership ROI for the Retailer
The idea was to make this as frictionless a shopping experience for consumers and as frictionless as possible for retailers.
“How do we make it so that ... they don't look at us thinking that we are asking them to do one more thing,” Fitzgerald says of retailers. “We're asking them to do something, yes, ... but something that's ultimately going to save them time and energy and sell them more apples.”
Yes! Apples comes with the core knowledge of the category, pun intentional, of New York Apple Sales, which has been in business for more than a century.
“We want to be your strategic partner,” she says. “We want to make selling apples easier for you and your consumer. We want to help you trade consumers up from a gala to SweeTango buyer. We want to get more people putting it in their carts. We want to go against the berries and the Cotton Candy grapes of the world. We want to show the apples are just as exciting as other categories that are showing innovation as well.”
