Changing the way we pick our fruit and veggies. 

Inspired by overseas trends from European retailers, who had started doing their bit to help tackle the growing food crisis, Harris Farm Markets wanted to look at how Australian’s select their fresh food.

Each day thousands of kilos of perfectly good fruit and vegetables never leave the farm gate due to minor visual imperfections. Horticulture Australia estimates that around 25% of each crop is wasted since it doesn’t meet the specifications of the major supermarkets, hurting the environment, the farming industry and raising the cost of food for Australian families.

Harris Farm Markets came to us wanting to create a new range, partnering with some of the best farmers in Australia to take more of their stock that would end up in landfill, and offer it at up to 50% cheaper than the regular produce.

Our approach was to create a food movement that consumers could get behind.

Introducing Imperfect Picks; a positioning for the range that aims to challenge established food perceptions of what’s ‘perfect’ by basing fruit and veg buying decisions on freshness and taste, not a weird shape or blemish.

The previously unloved produce was captured through imperfectly beautiful photography to set it apart in-store, and ran as part of a campaign across social, in-store, pre-roll and press.

The campaign caused the stir that we wanted. Not only getting coverage in the media, from ACA to the Daily Mail, it also saw a massive swelling of consumer support online and in-store. In the first week, our Facebook engagement levels jumped to 127% (an increase of 15,236% from pre-campaign), causing our reach numbers to be more than double our fan base, and eventually get our message to over 1,000,000 consumers within a month. In-store sales also increased, with purchase of the range taking off, and causing a roll-on effect to increase overall shopper basket size.

So the big question; did the campaign change behaviour? Results are early, but within weeks the campaign has already saved over 100 tones of perfectly good fruit and vegetables - helping the farmers, the environment and their grocery bill.