• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, August 24, 2015

A recently completed Chiquita mobile shopper marketing campaign, in which scanning labels on the bananas unlocked exclusive "Minions" movie content and prizes, resulted in high engagement and a site return rate exceeding 50%, according to FunMobility, the agency that developed the interactive program with the brand.

The target audience — moms with young kids — accounted for 75% of traffic and on-site activity over eight weeks, and one in five unique visitors opted in (providing an email address) to receive content or win prizes, reports the agency. The average user engaged in more than 10 activities, for an average session length of 4 minutes, 36 seconds, and half of the users opted in to receive the brand's interactive newsletter.

As millions of fans know, "bananas" is one of the Minions' favorite words. Chiquita Banana stickers are "the most visible branded fruit packaging in grocery stores," so capitalizing on that brand recognition to make a digital connection to the yellow-hued characters that were all over the media and social channels over the summer was a natural, notes FunMobility founder Adam Lavine. 

Consumers who downloaded the Chiquita FanFun app could use smartphones to snap photos of any of 32 different image-recognition-enabled stickers on the bananas in grocery stores across the country. The images unlocked Minions games and other content; instant-win prizes such as tickets to the movie, water bottles and beach towels; chances to win a grand prize of a trip to London; and banana recipes. The instant-win and sweeps promotions ran from June 8 to Aug. 15.

With repeat brand engagement, as well as CRM data capture and long-term customer retention as objectives, the images were unlocked in a virtual sticker book to enhance collectibility, and users could return and win up to four prizes per hour.   

The mobile experience was hosted on a (still live) Chiquita-branded MinionsLoveBananas site. In addition to scanning the on-product stickers, fans could win prizes and sweeps entries by creating a Minions-themed digital greeting card on the site, or achieving certain thresholds while playing various games.