An Ad Icon Remade
The Sunmaid has been remaid... ermmm remade.
At the tune of 7 million dollars, the icon got a make-over.
Now, introducing a new Sunmaid.
Kingsburg, Fresno County -- The Sun-Maid girl is doing a lot more than thinking outside the raisin box.
She speaks, she charms, she radiates good health and nutrition. And she sells.
Ninety years after the smiling girl with the red sunbonnet carrying a tray of grapes first appeared on Sun-Maid raisin boxes, animators have brought her to life.
She's appearing in nationwide advertising and at a recently redesigned Web site, at www.sunmaid.com, delivering a message -- all marketers should be so lucky -- that is simple and true: Sun-Maid raisins are "nothing but grapes and sunshine.''
Sun-Maid Growers of California, formed in 1912 and now the world's largest producer and processor of raisins and other dried fruits, is not touching the image on its product containers. The portrait of Lorraine Collett, a pretty Fresno girl, has been the brand's trademark since 1916, with slight updates made in 1923, 1956 and finally in 1970. It's one of the most recognized brand images in the world.
Collett, the original Sun-Maid girl, was spotted by executives of Sun-Maid, then called the California Associated Raisin Co., drying her long brown hair and wearing her mother's red sunbonnet in her backyard. They had a San Francisco artist, Fanny Scafford, do her portrait, which today is kept in Sun-Maid's vault.
In 1988, the bonnet was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. Collett, whose married name was Petersen, had a long relationship with Sun-Maid. She died in 1983.
The new Sun-Maid girl in the ad and on the Web is considerably more contemporary.
On the Web page, though, she still wears the sunbonnet, she does yoga at the beach. She is sunny and happy in a TV ad -- in a vineyard and in a kitchen.
The actress who gives the Sun-Maid Girl her voice, 21-year-old Andie Bolt of Los Angeles, says she "seems to be in a good mood -- like she just had a great time at the spa.''
So why tinker with an icon?
"This is as good a time as any to get on the wave of health and nutrition,'' said Sun-Maid's president, Barry Kriebel.
The $7 million ad campaign, largely on cable television, but also in print, gives voice and personality to the girl who tells the story of raisins from the San Joaquin Valley:
"Ninety-three million miles -- that's how far sunlight travels, from the sun to the Earth (during harvest time) to turn our grapes into Sun-Maid raisins. And that's all we put in -- grapes and sunshine. Sun-Maid raisins: nothing but grapes and sunshine.''
Market research told Sun-Maid that not everyone knows that raisins are simply dried grapes. Almost all Sun-Maid raisins are Thompson seedless harvested about the first week of September and placed on clean paper trays in the fields to dry for about three weeks, with no coatings or additives.
Kriebel said some visitors to Sun-Maid ask, "How big is your dehydrator? Do you dry raisins all year long?"
During drying, the sun bakes the vineyard floor, producing intense ground temperatures that caramelize the sugars in the grapes to give them flavor and color. Leaving fruits out to dry in the sun and air is one of the oldest methods of preserving food.
The advertising challenge was to have the Sun-Maid girl make the point about the simplicity and natural goodness of raisins and do it in a way consistent with her image and the 90-year-old emotional bond between her and consumers.
"You don't give her too much of a personality,'' Kriebel said. "You're not going to see her dancing or kicking up her heels out in the vineyard, but have her do what is appropriate for her to do, based on her history but also being a contemporary person living in the 21st century.''
The work fell to Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, animation partners in Kleiser-Walczak Studios in Hollywood and North Adams, Mass. Walczak began the process by assembling a montage of photos of people with fresh faces, looking for common denominators in what made them attractive but what may be missing in the 90-year-old Sun-Maid girl image.
So what was lacking? Bright eyes, the animators discovered. And contemporary eyebrows, Kleiser said. Accordingly, there's a noticeable reflection in the Sun-Maid Girl's brown eyes -- as bright and engaging as her smile.
"Our job was to create a character that has been frozen on a box for 90 years and make her a very attractive first impression, even make her stunning -- bring her into the 21st century and make her look hip and healthy and fun," Kleiser said. "We wanted someone who takes her life into her own hands, is healthy and encourages her family to be healthy.''
This may be the beginning of a new career for the Sun-Maid girl if nascent plans for additional ads are finalized. There's talk of putting her in a variety of places -- perhaps at the market, maybe the gym -- and having her speak several languages, reflecting that one-third of Sun-Maid's dried fruit is exported. The new ad has already been translated into Japanese.
"I think she should have a name,'' Walczak said, who added that she has begun to give thought to her subject's personality traits and what she calls the girl's "character bible.''
The new girl is also more shapely that the original. "That was part of giving her a little more personality,'' Kriebel said.
Still, changing an icon is a difficult for some people.
"She's a classic mascot, and I like emphasizing Sun-Maid's, if you will, roots,'' said Robert Duncan, executive creative director at DuncanChannon advertising in San Rafael.
"But I'm not sure the charm of that orange-crate-label art style isn't diminished when it's turned into anime. Something a little creepy about this machine-made 21st century version," Duncan said. "I keep waiting for her to peel back that improbably toothy grin to reveal the malevolent robot beneath.''
Daniel Stein, founder and chief executive of EVB, a San Francisco ad agency, agreed that it's wrong for Sun-Maid to go techy.
"By making drastic changes to a well-known character, you run the risk of overshadowing the brand equity behind the icon,'' he said. "By using a high-tech 3-D character, we lose the wholesome and natural equities. The character comes across as robotic, artificial and soulless.''
Whatever the verdict on its brand image, Sun-Maid has been making good business decisions. It had more than $250 million in net sales in 2005, the highest in the 94-year history of the 1,000-member cooperative.
California raisins are produced on some 200,000 acres in the San Joaquin Valley, and about 80 percent of the acreage is within a 30-mile radius of Fresno. Production of all raisin varieties from the area totals more than 400,000 tons annually -- about 45 percent of the world's supply.
As a rule, change comes slowly in agriculture -- particularly among grape growers, whose vines have a lifecycle of 80 to 100 years, compared with 20 to 25 years of productive life for apricot trees, for example.
"Raisin and grape people start with the idea, 'If I do it the way my grandfather did it, I'll be fine,' '' Kriebel said.
The 56-year-old Kriebel has been Sun-Maid's president for 20 years and was its attorney for 10 years before that.
Last season, 35 to 40 percent of the crop was mechanically harvested, but it took 15 years of encouraging growers to get to that point, Kriebel said.
"We try to keep nudging them along,'' he said. "It took labor shortages (at harvest), proven technology and people willing to take some risk."
Growers, however, are embracing the Sun-Maid ad campaign, said Glen Goto, vice chairman of the Raisin Bargaining Association in Fresno, which negotiates crop prices for farmers.
"People think it is upbeat and that it is overdue,'' Goto said.
In the mid-1980s, an ad campaign featuring the animated California dancing raisins became wildly popular and won multiple ad industry awards. The ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding, with animation by Will Vinton Studios, created a cast of hip raisins and used Buddy Miles on the "Heard it Through the Grapevine'' soundtrack. It generated sales, but more for licensed raisin-related dolls and other collectables than for raisins themselves.
Keeping a trademark contemporary is not easy, especially if it's a person who has to keep up with the times. The original 1936 portrait of Betty Crocker, a brand icon in the food industry, was made over in 1955, 1965, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1986 and last in 1996, "while remaining true to her commitment to consumers,'' said Pam Becker, a spokeswoman for General Mills.
Now, it's getting hard to find her image on General Mills product packaging. The company has substituted a red spoon to symbolize Betty Crocker, Becker said.
"It's difficult to keep a portrait current as women's roles, hair and dress styles are changing so rapidly,'' she said. Also, with new requirements for ingredient and nutrition labeling, along with graphics, packages are becoming crowded, she said.
"But you have to be reflective of contemporary women,'' said Becker. "To be meaningful to the consumer you have to identify with her.''
It's easy for Andie Bolt, the actress whose voice is heard in the new ad, to identify with the Sun-Maid girl. She was reared on a ranch in Lake Isabella (Kern County), east of Bakersfield, not far from raisin country. She has warm memories of eating a box of Sun-Maid raisins at school every day.
"It's an honor to do the voice of someone on a box I grew up with,'' Bolt said. "I was a huge fan of raisins. My sisters didn't like them so I took all of theirs.''
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