6 million tomatoes for free

6 million tomatoes with wrinkles and dents due to extreme summer heat. How to prevent them from the rubbish heap? This anti food waste campaign resulted into public indignation that convinced supermarkted to sell ‘almost perfect’ veggies.

The creative idea is simple and effective: a striking Marktplaats ad to put the issue of food waste due to strict quality criteria on the public agenda.

On Saturday, all 6 million tomatoes were saved. In 3 days, we realized 198 publications, 21.7 million reach, 410 social posts with 6,370,032 views.

The anti food waste campaign resulted into public indignation and convinced supermarkets to lower their quality criteria during periods of extreme weather. In this way, we have delivered a continuous contribution against food waste for a budget of just € 3.750,-.

And the story continues. In November 2018, minister Schouten of Agriculture stated in a letter to the Dutch house of representatives that she will implement an action program to support farmers even better to deliver ‘almost perfect’ veggies and fruits to prevent food waste. In her letter, the minister referred to the 6 million snack tomatoes given away for free due to strict quality criteria last summer.

Translations

Marktplaats ad heading: 6 milion snack tomatoes for free, you snooze you lose

Thursday afternoon, we posted the ad ‘6 million tomatoes for free’ at ‘Marktplaats’ (local eBay), resulting into 30,000 views in 24 hours. On Friday, people could pick-up tomatoes at 3 Greenco greenhouses. Long queues were formed. In 1.5 hours the tomatoes were ‘sold out’.

Happy ‘consumers’ posted a lot on social media, stating that the tomatoes should be sold, shared dishes made of the tomatoes and gave left-overs to neighbors. We tipped news media and influencers leading much (social) media attention about the announcement, queues and the public indignation.

As the poor should also profit, we delivered tomatoes at a Dutch Food Bank soup factory. To broaden reach, we partnered with publicity-minded food rescue restaurant Instock. They asked their social media followers to pick-up tomatoes at their restaurants.

We reached the target group through owned and earned media, without media budget. Instock and influencers partnered for free, f.e. major Femke Halsema and foodblogger Francesca.

The summer of 2018 was hot. For vegetable growers big worries arose. Plums were too small. Zucchinis too large. Due to strict quality criteria of supermarkets the veggies were not accepted.

The snack tomatoes of grower Greenco didn’t meet the quality criteria as well. 6 million tomatoes had some wrinkles and little dents due to extreme heat in the greenhouses. However, the little tomatoes tasted great. On Thursday morning, Greenco asked us to prevent 6 million tomatoes ending up on the rubbish heap and give them a good destination. Time and budget were limited. We had to set up the anti-food waste campaign quickly, as the tomatoes quality deteriorated. Ultimately on Saturday the 6 million snack tomatoes should have left the green houses.

Strategic considerations

As much people should enjoy the tomatoes, incl. poor people;

Let supermarkets reconsider the strict quality policy during extreme weather conditions that will become more common.

PR/INFLUENCER / BRONZE

Anticipated well on a hidden displeasure by changing the public opinion with a simple yet effective idea in order to put people and supermarkets into action.