An Envy Apple advertisement next to a bus stop in Allston. Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — If you’ve driven up I-93 in Boston or taken an MBTA bus, you’ll probably have seen them. Ads for “Envy Apples” popped up this winter all around Greater Boston, adorning massive billboards, signs in T stations, and even pasted over trash cans. On the billboards, bold black print next to a scarlet apple the size of a sofa reads, “HEY BOSTON! Get ready to taste your new favorite apple.” The flood of ads led to a simple, if understandable question:
Why does this one piece of fruit get a major-market ad campaign?
WBZ NewsRadio did some digging to peel back the skin of where the ads came from and why Boston, specifically, was being targeted. The reason for the campaign turns out to be part of a mounting trend in the produce industry.
Unlike the Macintoshes and Cortlands you find in the produce aisle, Envy apples are what growers call a branded or “club” variety. That means the apples are patented, trademarked, and have a whole marketing team behind them. They’re their own strictly controlled “brand.” Only a handful of hand-picked farmers in Washington are even allowed to grow the apples, and other growers need to apply and be approved. The produce company T&G Global out of New Zealand owns the rights to the variety.
“We found that Envy Apples weren’t selling as well on the East Coast, so we started a campaign to get people to ask about it,” said Jen Lessner, a marketing and analytics manager with T&G. She spearheaded the Boston Envy campaign. Lessner explained that the Midwest and East Coast are generally hungry for apples, but local growers make them extremely competitive markets that are difficult to break into.
“We needed a leg up,” she explained. That meant getting people to ask big store chains in Boston if they had Envy apples in stock, which is what led to the great apple ad invasion of early 2024.
Branded varieties of fruit and veggies aren’t new, but the trend is growing. Industry observers say club varieties are on the rise. Exclusivity helps keep prices high; T&G alone raked in $800 million last year, just on apples. Instead of “mandarin oranges,” producers want customers to want “Halos” or “Cuties.” And instead of just “apples,” they want “Envy” or “Jazz” or “Smitten” to be the apple of the consumer’s eye.
Though Lessner wouldn’t share exactly how much T&G was spending on the campaign, she said the campaign had generated 34 million impressions – an advertising term meaning it may have been seen up to 34 million times.
The billboards are set to come down by the end of March, and they appear to have worked. Lessner said sales are up 120% year over year. But that doesn’t mean the fruits will fade to black.
“You haven’t seen the last of Envy,” she said.
WBZ’s Chaiel Schaffel (@CschaffelWBZ) reports:
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