Avocados From Mexico's Innovation Story. Six Years of Relentless Innovation

A few months ago I wrote a piece about Avocados From Mexico's innovation story as the response to a series of questions asked by a publication for an Innovation Award. (Update: we won, but the information is under embargo until it goes public on June 29, 2020).

Within the answers to those four questions below, there's the innovation story of a brand that has reinvented the way fresh produce marketing has been done. Also, the reason why the Mexican avocado industry attributes much of success to AFM's marketing strategies.

1)   Innovation Example. Provide one detailed example of an important innovation that originated from a surprising source within your organization. Include details of impact/outcomes as well.

The consideration of our organization as an innovator is surprising on its own. Our organization can't be compared side by side with multi-billion-dollar companies, giant technology leaders, or CPG companies. We are a fruit. A small, package-less little fruit, building a brand in a brand-less category by reinventing every established marketing rule in our industry and by challenging every preconceived notion to pave an unexplored trail. Ultimately, to change the way marketing was done in our industry and for our category. 

The impressive avocado penetration of Avocados From Mexico in the US—which today represents 2.5 BILLION pounds of avocados in the US alone)—is the product of one innovation after another since the startup was created in 2013.

The first innovation is the sole existence of our group, Avocados From Mexico. The objective of the non-profit marketing arm created in the US and headquartered in Dallas, TX, is to promote the product of the labor of two organizations:

1) APEAM: the organization that groups over 20K small avocado growers and

2) MHAIA: the American association that groups hundreds of packers and distributors. For the first time in history, two separate organizations came together under one of the USDA Commodity Checkoff Programs with one common goal: Build the Avocados From Mexico brand and increase the demand of Mexican Hass avocados in the US. This alliance was possible because of an impressive level of organization of thousands of small growers who came together in agreement and worked to get their orchards certified to meet the very high-quality standards required by the U.S Department of Agriculture, for it to accept them in the Mexican Hass Avocado export program.

When I interviewed for the Head of Digital Marketing position in 2014, Alvaro Luque, President of the newly created small company of about 10 people, told me: "I'm looking for someone that helps me do what nobody else in the industry is doing". Since then, I have witnessed, participated in, or lead countless breakthrough innovations in all areas of our growing organization. As we innovate and grow, our positive impact in our industry, in our country (the United States), and in the world is felt. Not only we are fueling America's appetite for healthy eating habits, but U.S. imports of Mexican Hass avocados also contributed the following to the U.S. economy in 2017:

●     $5.5 billion in output or spending;

●     $3.4 billion to the U.S. GDP (value-added);

●     28,251 jobs;

●     $1.9 billion in labor income; and

●     $932 million in taxes.

Every dollar of Mexican avocado imports in 2017 generated $2.34 dollars in output, $1.45 in U.S. GDP, and $0.81 in labor income. Every million dollars of those imports generated 12.1 U.S. jobs. California and Texas were the largest state beneficiaries from the economic activity generated by avocado imports. Much of the economic benefits accrued to the wholesale/retail and service industries at both the state and national levels.

Below are some of the innovations that, unpredictably, have been driven by one little, healthy fruit that in only a few years has become a staple on America's tables  – Click on the links for details. 

●      Launched the First Fresh Avocado-Centric Concession Stand in the nation:- Followed by several others across the nation.

●     Opened the first-ever avocado-centric restaurant in the world. Although we are neither food operators nor are we in the restaurant management business, we came up with an unusual marketing initiative to promote the AFM brand and create an "avocado innovation lab" that could help us test recipe innovations that we can then promote to food operators to meet one of our marketing goals in the Food Service segment which is the increase in menu penetration. AvoEatery was launched in January 2020.

●      Built a digital interface for Avocado’s “Avo-matic” food truck that allowed users to custom orders via giant touch screen interfaces. Using proprietary facial emotion tracking software, the diner was then instructed to smile as a dial measured the size of their grin as well as the amount of time held. Once the designated smile requirements were met, the user was congratulated with a reward screen, a picture of them mid-smile as a social sharable, and a 3D animation of a robot that provided recipe and avocado hacks until the “Avo-matic” delivered their custom food.

●     Revolutionized The Way Consumers Shop For Avocados With Our New Education Program. We partnered with Walmart on the execution. This initiative involves the developed and launch of the first Chatbot in the fresh produce industry, which is represented by a, engaging character named Selma Avocado, created to engage consumers with the brand’s messages aimed to remove the main avocado consumption barrier which is the lack of avocado education and to drive avocado purchases.

●     Partnered with technology startup Inmoji to concept, develop and launch a new mobile tool that combined the selfie and emoji to deliver our Super Bowl digital experience to the consumers.

●     Integrated IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence into a digital activation that matched people with their favorite dogs available for adoption within their zip codes -  Fast Company.

●     Created the first-ever Avocado University in the world, with custom-designed classes built to educate food operators on all things avocado and spark innovation across the Food Service industry. Over a year after the University was opened, we have graduated hundreds of operators that seek to change the ways their patrons consume avocados in ways never known before.

●     Not only was AFM the first produce brand ever to have a TV ad in the Super Bowl, but our creative, innovative and unexpected approach to digital marketing has made us the top #1 and #2 Super Bowl digital campaign five years in a row, even ahead of multi-billion dollar and Super Bowl veteran brands. Below are links to a couple of case studies that described in detail those innovative approaches and the breakthrough and unexpected results, considering a small brand like ours. 

This year, we were the first company ever to place its digital marketing assets in the blockchain. As the media put it, “the move represents one of the bigger applications of blockchain technology in a consumer-facing campaign in recent memory.”

2. Investment in Innovation 

Detail your organization’s investments to encourage and support innovation. Examples might include R&D spending, incubators, corporate venture capital programs, etc.

The company's investments to encourage and support innovation include:

●     Culinary Innovation: The creation and maintenance of a state of the art Culinary Center located in the company HQ in Irving, Texas. The Culinary Center serves as the U.S. hub for year-round education, creativity, culinary ingenuity, and thought leadership. It is leveraged for innovative sessions and culinary exploration, besides serving as the hub of the only avocado University existing in Food Service work. The company invested $750,000 in the development of the Center, and invests approximately $60,000 in its maintenance, including the operational cost of the Avocado University.

●     Talent development: One of the top priorities of the organization is to develop top-notch talent across the board. The small company of fewer than 50 people invests over $60K each year to provide world-class training to 100% of its employees in the areas of leadership and soft-skills and professional knowledge and hard-skills in the most prestigious institutions in the world including Harvard University, Yale University, Northwestern University among others. 

●     Innovation Workshop: In 2020, the company is investing over $150K on an exclusive innovation workshop developed by Yale University and customized for Avocados From Mexico. This workshop will take place at Yale University in New Haven over an entire week, and every employee, from Sr. Managers and above, will be participating. AFM is also inviting the advertising partners that work daily with its marketing teams on developing and executing the brand's marketing programs. In total, 25 people are participating in the week-long innovation workshop.

●     Research investment: The goals of the organization are determined by the opportunities identified through research, as it is also our strategic direction is crafted to seize those opportunities. We rely heavily on research and allocate an average of $3 Million per year on research alone. Since our product belongs to a package-less category, and we only have one product, the definition of "development" in our case is applicable to marketing innovations that represent new and different approaches to accomplish our two main objectives: Increase the demand of Avocados From Mexico in the U.S and build the Avocados From Mexico brand.

We leverage research to identify future opportunities and potential threats, way ahead of time. From the data obtained, we focus on discovering and analyzing the trends and insights that help us predict potential future outcomes. That approach enables us to craft and execute the right strategies to seize those opportunities and to neutralize those threats even before they are obvious, which has been one of the cornerstones of our success.

A key investment related to this point was contracting the Cambridge Group. A consultant group that specializes in developing demand-driven strategies to maximize growth and profitability, with a unique approach that focuses on looking at their business through the eyes of the customer rather than looking at the customer through the eyes of the business. Through our partnership with Cambridge - which represented a six figures investment, we developed a robust mid-term plan, which is currently defining our growth strategies.

Through the assessment performed by The Cambridge Group, our company was identified as a Performance Driven Company, according to their business classification model. That discovery led to the development of our goals measurement tech platform which we called AMBO, (Avocados Management by Objectives). AMBO is leveraged to track the organization’s business and marketing goals by groups and by individuals on an ongoing basis as these get accomplished.

Despite being a non-profit marketing organization with no sales goals, we set ambitious marketing performance goals aimed to contribute to our two main objectives:

1) Increase avocado consumption in the U.S.

2) Increase the brand equity of Avocados From Mexico in the U.S.

Currently, there are over 200 goals and objectives being tracked on AMBO corresponding to our 2019-2020 fiscal year, and all those goals and objectives are scheduled to be met before the fiscal year ends in June 2020. All and each of them was created to directly impact the two main objectives of the organization mentioned above. The entire process shows a masterfully orchestrated alignment of every action taken and every dollar invested by each individual and every group within the organization, with the main goals of it.

3- Innovation Initiatives and Programs 

Describe the programs/systems/initiatives that your organization has in place that encourage an innovative culture.

Our organization's planning process is intrinsically a trigger for innovation. It is a disciplined and highly creative process structured to deliver organized, sustainable and meaningful innovation. It is comprised of three phases over a six-month period during our fiscal year, which goes from July to June.

PHASE 1 – MID-YEAR REVIEW:

Every January, our 6-month planning process for the following fiscal officially starts. It kicks off with an all-hands / all-agencies meeting called the Mid-Year-Review, where each unit and its agencies present an assessment of all their initiatives for the current year, results, challenges encountered, learnings and potential room for improvement in front of the entire company and all the agency partners. This process invites us to stop and think deeply about what is working and what could we do to improve our results. It is a thought-provoking process and a priceless opportunity to awaken our curiosity as individuals and as team members, to find answers, solutions, and new ideas to change outcomes and improve results for the second part of the year.

PHASE 2 – PLANNING 1:

The next step is Planning 1. From our initial thinking process, countless ideas surface, and start shaping our approaches for the next fiscal year. Each unit, including internal teams and agency partners, goes through an ideation process, a couple of pre-planning meetings, and prepares a document outlining the thinking that will shape their strategies and executions for the new year. That document is presented in front of the entire company and agency partners in an immersive two-day conference. This is the opportunity for each unit to understand what the other units are doing and how are they thinking about the business, and to uncover opportunities for alignments, partnerships, and joint ventures to be established among units.

PHASE 3 – PLANNING 2:

The last phase takes into consideration the feedback offered by our CEO during the Planning One, the teams regroup within each unit to polish their strategies, propositions, and approaches, and return for Phase Two with a final plan. Between Phase One and Phase Two, the budgets for each unit get approved, and each unit knows its exact budget for the year. Their strategies and tactics presented during this last phase are now beyond just a proposal. They are already an annual plan with detailed execution approaches, tactics, and budget allocations. 

INNOVATING THE INNOVATION PROCESS:

In 2020, we are kicking off the process with an innovation workshop. As mentioned above, the company is investing over $150K on an exclusive innovation workshop developed by Yale University and customized for Avocados From Mexico. This workshop will take place at Yale University in New Haven over the course of an entire week, and every employee, from Sr. Managers and above, got to participate. AFM is also inviting the advertising partners that work daily with its marketing teams on developing and executing the brand's marketing programs. In total, 25 people are participating in the week-long innovation workshop.

During this program, Senior Managers and above will receive innovation training for some of the most qualified professors in the nation, including the following topics:

●     The Value of Experimentation

●     Driving Organizational Innovation 

●     The Keys to Influence and Persuasion

●     Dealing with Resisters

●     Understanding Team Dynamics

●     Becoming a High Performing Team

●     Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

●     Changing Organizational Culture

●     Reframing as a Strategy for Innovation 

This workshop will officially kick off our 2021 planning process. Following our week at Yale University, the new innovative approaches will shape our company's 2021 initiatives. 

4- Workplace Culture 

What steps has your company taken to foster a workplace culture where employees feel empowered to innovate? Describe your organization’s inclusion and diversity efforts, and the role diverse or unconventional perspectives have played in the organization’s culture.

Our organization is a multicultural, multi-talented pot comprised of individuals from diverse backgrounds, countries of origin, and ethnicities. The small organization of fewer than 50 people, represents at least eight different nationalities and a female workforce of about 60%. That composition and diversity make our company organically inclusive.

●     Culture as an alignment force: Our organization doesn't rely on a vision or a mission statement. Instead, we believe in our culture as an organic guiding force that will naturally and organically drive every individual and every team toward one common place where we want to take the brand and the organization to. That culture is encapsulated in our company manifesto, and in our 10 operating guidelines, which are even written in our office's walls and encourage, empower, and inspire all individuals to live by them.

1. Believe in the power of brand building
2. Spread the vibrant magic of Mexicanity
3. Be the strategic category catalyst
4. Always focus on value, not price
5. Be an outlier and break the produce's mold
6. Educate, educate, educate
7. Act as a responsible category leader
8. Celebrate wins, and then improve them
9. Develop the best people in the industry
10. Work hard, and always have fun

●      Additionally, the organization puts in place empowerment initiatives and gender equality as catalysts to drive progress and innovation: One example of the steps the company is talking toward fostering a positive workforce culture and empowerment of employees is the FLI (Female Leadership Initiative). The program is being kicked off in January 2020. It encompasses a series of actions to develop female leadership to harness female leadership style characteristics to strengthen the organization as a whole. The initial actions include a paid membership for all AFM female employees to become members of the She Runs It organization, including (in addition to the membership benefits) the participation cost and travel expenses to attend one of the organization's signature events in New York, Chicago or San Francisco. To kick off this initiative AFM has invited Keynote speaker and author of the best-seller Greet Meets Grace, Daina Middleton, who will visit AFM HQ to offer to all female employees her highly motivational keynote.

●     Our commitment to gender equality goes beyond our organization and extends to our core consumers: “Maya” and “Maria”, as we call them in the general market and in the Hispanic respectively. For them, we became the first produce company to sponsor the #SeeHer Movement funded and supported by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

Through our commitment to the #SeeHer movement, we make a promise to all female consumers out there, guaranteeing that our messages are constructive and positive for the current and future generations of female consumers.

Among other initiatives, we have a Cultural Committee formed by a group of non-executive employees. The company assigns an annual budget to this initiative, which is allocated by the Committee toward the organization of events and activities aimed to allow the exercise of the operation guidelines which strengthens the culture. 

These events and initiatives are conceived, planned, and executed by the junior employees, which gives them the opportunity to distill their own creative ideas into the culture of the organization which gets shaped on an ongoing basis. 

I want to close this post with a favorite quote: "The best thing that playing Tetris taught me was that when we fit, we disappear".

Avocados From Mexico's unwavering commitment to innovation will continue to challenge the industry's paradigms and building a new marketing playbook for the fresh produce industry. As a responsible category leader, AFM will stay always fresh, always innovating.

Ivonne Kinser

Head of Digital Marketing | Avocados From Mexico's Innovation Efforts' Lead

#AvocadosFromMexico #Innovation #Marketing #Avocados

Website: AvocadosFromMexico.com