The Jamaica Producers (JP) Group last week launched a new ad campaign that it hopes will push up sales of ripe bananas domestically, even while the group positions itself to expand produce sales into the region.

According to JP managing director Jeffrey Hall, the new drive addresses a significant shortcoming of the local market — the lack of investment in marketing local produce.

“When you look at consumer goods in Jamaica and universally, and focusing narrowly on foods, you will see that there is a very significant investment in advertising, merchandising, inter-promotions and branding,” Hall said at the launch of the campaign — dubbed ‘Peel the Benefits’ — held at Lillian’s Restaurant, the University of Technology (UTech), Kingston. “But in Jamaica you look at green bananas, yam, sweet potatoes, ripe bananas, nobody has really made a concerted effort to bring the same kind of advertising and branded, targeted campaign to the Jamaican consumer.”

Hall said the campaign, which will run for a year, is one step in bridging the gap between the exposure given to the processed foods and fresh produce sectors.

JP Tropical Foods’ commercial director Roll Simon’s placed the initial cost of the the campaign at approximately $10 million to put up billboards and execute in-store promotions, radio and print advertising , but he expects that figure will grow as the marketing campaign expands.

The “brand led price point promotions” will result in ‘substantial payback’, according to Hall.

“We made a similar investment last year in the snack food business and the results were that in sheer revenue terms we moved the revenue line in JP Tropical Foods from about $700 million to about $1.25 billion, over $500 million in revenue growth,” he said. “I’m not saying that that is the kind of number that we would expect year on year because of the number of factors involved. But I would say that a substantial investment in awareness and brand led promotion can move ripe banana consumption, and green banana consumption in Jamaica.”

The financial improvement went all the way to the bottom line for the tropical division, which made a turnaround from a $225 million loss in 2008 to a $48 million profit for the financial year that ran to December 31, 2009.

JP Tropical Foods is a subsidiary of the Jamaica Producers Group that operates within the Caribbean and Central America.

Hall said there are additional efforts to get the bananas into regional markets.

“Right now we are having discussions about market opportunities within the Caribbean in the first instance. We need to satisfy concerns in those markets some of which produce bananas, like the phyto-sanitary conditions but we certainly are in the process now.”

“On the processed bananas side, we are already exporting internationally and we are seeing reasonable growth there,” Hall said.

Simmonds said after the launch that the effort would not only lead to the increase sales of JP bananas, but that other producers of bananas and farm produce can benefit from the campaign. He expects that as the demand for bananas increase, farmers would benefit through the sale of greater volumes of the produce and better awareness of the health benefits of locally grown foods.

The increased sale of the produce will also auger well for students of UTech. The campaign, endorsed by Olympic champions Shelly Ann Fraser and Asafa Powell, both UTech students, will see the University receiving approximately two per cent or $32 from the sale of each box of JP bananas.

Simmonds said that JP will donate at least $1.5 million towards the fund this year.