Avocados From Mexico has raised awareness of its brand by way of the piles of green-and-orange stickered-fruit at the grocery store, its catchy jingle, and its celebrity-packed Super Bowl commercials. This year, it has employed actor Anna Faris for what it’s calling the “Big Game Teaser”. And the brand recently announced a limited-edition home goods line.
But here are two things you probably didn’t know: “We don’t sell avocados, and we’re not from Mexico,” says Ivonne Kinser, AFM’s head of marketing.
Founded in 2013, the Irving-based nonprofit acts as the marketing arm for thousands of avocado orchards in Mexico and dozens of U.S. importers.
All a farmer needs to be represented by AFM is 12 avocado trees and a U.S. Department of Agriculture certification, says Kinser. Mexico has nearly 30,000 avocado farmers, the majority of which are from Michoacán, a central Mexican state along the Pacific Ocean. While the industry, which has grown exponentially since the U.S. lifted its ban on Mexican avocados in 1997, has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, it has also led to rapid deforestation. According to some reports, Michoacán loses around 20,000 acres of forest each year to make way for avocado orchards.
While avocados are harvested across the Americas, Hass trees in Michoacán bloom all year long. Because of this, Kinser says Mexico is the “only place on Earth where that all-year production of avocados is enough to feed the appetite of America.”
Americans consume more than 8 pounds of the fruit per capita each year. And AFM farmers export around 2.5 billion pounds of avocados to the US, about 90 percent of the market share, each year.
But despite that huge stake in the avocado game, AFM struggles with misconceptions—like what the company does, for example. “Everybody knows that avocados are from Mexico,” Kinser says, the name and jingle make that clear. “But when you ask them what are the brands of avocados, very few identify Avocados From Mexico as a brand.”
Brand awareness, she says, is key to creating loyalty from consumers. “An avocado is an avocado,” but they want you buying AFM-branded fruit for your Super Bowl dips, weeknight tacos, and bougie brunch toasts.
So, the nonprofit invests a significant amount of time in coming up with non-traditional advertising ideas to go along with the typical Super Bowl commercial. It released a line of avocado-patterned athleisure. Ahead of last year’s Super Bowl, it created an avocado-colored suit for celebrity stylist Brad Goreski.
And AFM recently worked with Pantone, considered by many designers and printers to be the world’s top color authority, to make the brand’s logo an official color. The process was unusual, says Kinser, because AFM already had a brand color, and, well, Pantone doesn’t usually work with fruit. Kinser says they worked to create a color “story” for the brand. The result is a blend of green and yellow, meant to replicate a cross-section of a ripened avocado.
This has caused some controversy—some on social media have pointed out that it is a gradient and not a singular color, and that it is real-world hue that Pantone didn’t just “make up.” But the point, says Kinser, is to plant the seed that “every time you open a ripe avocado, you see the brand color.”
Once they settled on the color, Kinser says they wanted to do something “quirky and fun” to elevate it. So, instead of coming out with a full line of avocado-printed formalwear, the AFM marketing team announced the “Avocado Glow” kitchen and home goods collection on January 19.
The seven-piece collection features that “new” color as well as a playful yellow and green avocado pattern. It includes several items that make sense for a fruit-themed line: a bowl, to hold your guacamole; a serving tray, to serve the guac, of course; and even an apron, guac gets messy. Several other items—the oven mitts and coasters, feel adjacent to the point. And the final two items—wallpaper and a throw pillow—seem out of place. But the team had “the big game” in mind.
“The link is that as we are approaching the Super Bowl, everybody is entertaining and inviting their friends to Super Bowl parties,” Kinser says. And if you have all these items, “then you can have an Avocados From Mexico color theme around your Super Bowl party.”
Although you can’t actually buy the “Avocado Glow” collection anywhere, you can win it. AFM is giving the collection away in a sweepstakes as part of its 2023 Super Bowl activations, which also include a virtual hotel and an online shop filled with other merch.
The goal of all of it, says Kinser, is to show that AFM as a brand is “joyful and energetic and happy.” And, natch, for you to eat more avocados.
To win the collection, fill out this form through February 9.
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