Produce departments featured sweet displays promoting Bland Farms Vidalia onions in connection with its promotion with “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run.”
Bland Farms, Glennville, Ga., has chosen the winners in its display contest featuring a SpongeBob theme promoting the sweet onions. The total value of prizes in the contest were $10,000.
“We were so inspired by the creativity of our retailers, and grateful for their participation,” Meg Robinson, sales and marketing manager, said in a news release. “Not only did they help us get our fresh Vidalias to the shopper, they also captured the spirit of SpongeBob, bringing us all some much-needed fun and excitement.”
The four first-place winners, who each received $1,500, are:
- Shannon Adkins, Food City, Pikeville, Ky.;
- Mike Westfall, Fresh Encounter, Lafayette, Ind.;
- Bret Peterson, Hy-Vee, Rochester, Minn.; and
- Dan Olmstead, Hy-Vee, Ames, Iowa.
Additional winners are:
- Kelly Coleman, Food Giant, Brownsville, Tenn., second place ($750);
- Shannon Salinas, Hy-Vee, Austin, Minn., second place ($750);
- Lequitte Perry, Food City, Louisa, Ky., third place ($500).
- Twenty honorable mentions each received $100.
“Kids were drawn to the display. They asked questions about onions and even what I thought went into Krabby Patties,” Adkins, from Food City, Pikeville, Ky., said in the release. “Anything that gets our youth interested in eating healthy, I will stand behind 100%.”
The Vidalia onion grower-shipper engaged consumers with a social media scavenger contest, asking them to find SpongeBob Price Look-Up stickers on social media channels. A sweepstakes also offered consumers the chance to win multiple prizes, including a family trip to Paramount Pictures.
Troy Bland, chief operations officer, said this year has brought many challenges to retailers.
“Bland Farms is especially proud to have offered this wonderful opportunity to our retailers so they could create such a memorable shopper experience in produce,” he said in the release.
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