Brief:
- Chiquita Brands International partnered with audio and visual recognition app Shazam, which was acquired by Apple last December, to promote Chiquita's sustainability efforts, according to a statement provided to Mobile Marketer. Mobile users who scan a Shazam Code on Chiquita's blue stickers will unlock an augmented reality (AR) experience that virtually peels back the sticker to immerse viewers in a computer-generated world.
- A related virtual reality (VR) experience lets people follow the journey of a banana from Chiquita farms in Latin America to their kitchen tables. The VR experience shows more information about Chiquita's sustainability initiatives and innovations in farm management and logistics.
- Starting in mid-July, the Shazam Code will appear on 200 million Chiquita blue stickers in the U.S. and several European countries for four weeks. Creative agency Dffrnt Media developed the AR/VR experience.
Insight:
Chiquita's partnership with Shazam appears to be a solid way to harness the power of smartphones to create immersive experiences for consumers by printing small codes on product packaging. In Chiquita's case, that packaging is its iconic blue sticker that can now unlock to provide customers with the brand's sustainability information.
"Sustainability" has become a key watchword among younger consumers who show greater awareness around climate change and the environmental side effects of human behaviors. Chiquita's effort to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability will likely appeal to millennials and other consumers who are conscientious than prior generations about these social issues. According to a 2017 survey by the Shelton Group found that when millennials trust a company's social and environmental practices, 90% reported they'd buy from that brand.
On the AR front, tech giants Apple and Google in the past year have introduced software kits to help developers more easily and efficiently create apps that use immersive technologies. Global spending on AR/VR products and services is expected see a 92% increase year over year in 2018, growing to nearly $27 billion, according to research from the International Data Corporation (IDC) cited by ZDNet. Spending on AR/VR is forecast to see a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 72% between 2017 and 2022, the researcher estimated, highlighting that marketers have room to grow into the immersive technology space.
