Failure™ Magazine

Prunes: Turning Over a New Leaf

Change from ‘prune’ to ‘dried plum’ proving fruitful.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Business

Dried plums of tomorrow.

Today, almost every business wants to project a youthful image, and in the process attract a younger audience. Case in point is Pepsi, whose latest ad campaign features the 20-year-old megastar, Britney Spears, delivering song and dance routines punctuated by, “Pepsi: For Those Who Think Young.” In more and more businesses the support of a young demographic is necessary just to remain competitive. Recently, Nightline was nearly bumped off by The Late Show with David Letterman, even though Ted Koppel’s program maintains a larger viewing audience.

For the prune industry it was obvious entering the 21st century that the current youth-driven climate represented a threat to its growth prospects. After all, a fruit best known for promoting regularity among senior citizens simply wasn’t in step with the times. During the past two years, the prune has been undergoing a full-scale makeover, emerging with a new image and a new name—the dried plum.

Dark Side of the Prune
Companies have long used fiber and regularity as selling points for certain products. And, for a long time, that message worked particularly well for prunes. “If you go back to the 1940s and ’50s some of the brands were advertising the medicinal properties of prunes,” reminds Richard Peterson, executive director of the California Dried Plum Board, an agricultural marketing association that works to expand demand for dried plums.

The fruit solidified its reputation with a mid-’80s advertising campaign that championed prunes as ‘the high-fiber fruit.’ At the time, bran cereals were touting the health benefits of a high fiber diet, in part because of Ronald Reagan’s public battle with colon cancer. “We positioned ourselves as a better tasting alternative to bran cereals,” continues Peterson. “And it worked. During the ’80s we had unprecedented gains in domestic shipments. We had a claim that was supportable and believable and the timing was right.” However, when interest in fiber waned the campaign ceased to be effective and prune sales began a long, slow decline.

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