Pacific Plug & Liner – Hula Berry
Pacific Plug & Liner (PP&L), a leading innovator in horticulture, came to BatesMeron looking to market a brand new white strawberry they developed to growers and retailers. More than simply breaking into a new market, PP&L needed to generate excitement around a totally new type of fruit.
“So it’s a strawberry,
but it tastes like pineapple?”
Correct. While PP&L’s latest innovation was in fact a strawberry, its white appearance was the first clue that this was no ordinary produce. One bite and it was clear: this fruit may be a strawberry, but it’s a pineapple at heart. The sweet and tropical taste was unlike anything we had experienced before, and PP&L was eager for their customers to say the same. But before the berry could hit the shelves, it needed an identity to match its tutti-frutti taste.
SERVICES: brand messaging / visual identity / marketing collateral / point of sale / WEBSITE
Our task was to develop a personality for the berry that could translate into eye-catching and exciting branding materials. Most importantly, we needed each piece to help tell the berry’s origin story so that consumers could more easily wrap their heads around a strawberry that tastes like pineapple.
Our task was to develop a personality for the berry that could translate into eye-catching and exciting branding materials. Most importantly, we needed each piece to help tell the berry’s origin story so that consumers could more easily wrap their heads around a strawberry that tastes like pineapple.
Our designers and writers worked together to craft a name and identity for the fruit that would express its exciting, tropical taste. The name? Hula Berry. The logo? A bold and modern seal featuring a custom-illustrated, white strawberry graphic topped by a pineapple crown.
Once we established the new fruit’s identity, we worked with PP&L’s core team to develop point-of-sale tags, packaging and signage that pop off the shelf in the garden aisle.
PP&L also has a steady tradeshow presence, so we designed bright and interactive booth graphics for events so that Hula Berry would be difficult to ignore on the tradeshow floor.
To accompany these new designs and further educate the market on Hula Berry, we topped off our work by designing and programming a mobile friendly one-page website dedicated to the fruit. The site provides visitors with all the information they need on buying and growing Hula Berry and embodies the complete personality of the brand through fun messaging, animated imagery and richly layered textures.
We also created colorful and easy-to-follow infographics to help growers understand the new berry and explain how the unusual fruit came to life.
At the end of the season, thanks to the innovative collaboration between our team and PP&L’s, Hula Berry’s launch resulted in the purchase of all plants by Home Depot. All in all, Hula Berry exceeded its sales expectations with a whopping 97% sell-through rate to customers.
“Thanks to the BatesMeron team and their hard work on Hula Berry, we sold our entire inventory to Home Depot—roughly 140,000 plants. We couldn’t have achieved this without BatesMeron.”
