Cal Poly agribusiness students and their “Liora” Seedless Lemons won first place in the annual National AgriMarketing Association Student Marketing Competition in Kansas City, Mo. last week. They competed against 30 teams from across the nation, including Purdue University, Ohio State University, Cornell University and Texas A&M University.
The competitors are judged based on a marketing plan summary sent in a month in advance. At the actual competition, the teams have 20-minute presentations and a 10-minute question and answer period with the judges.
Agribusiness graduate student Brandon Banner was one of the advisers for the team.
“The biggest goal of the competition is to take your product and find the most realistic market plan,” Banner said. “Where are you going to sell it, and how much are you going to sell it for and what kind of promotional efforts are you going to use. The judges really liked our utilization of social media in our advertising.”
Banner said many of the competitors make up their own products, but this isn’t the case for Cal Poly.
“One of Cal Poly’s traditions is that we strive to partner with Cal Poly (alumni) and actual people in the industry to develop marketing plans for real products, rather than making something up,” Banner said.
This year students teamed up with Peter Alvitre — a Cal Poly agribusiness alumnus who owns Future Fruit, LLC and a part of the AGB Advisory Council — who owns the patent for the first seedless lemon in the U.S. market. Not only did the team win the competition, but Future Fruit, LLC can apply parts of its marketing plan in real life.
The team focused its marketing in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, specifically on high-end chefs. Its research found more than 70 percent of lemons sold are used in restaurants.
“The lemons are grown in the Central Valley of California, (and) those three cities are within 230 miles of the growing region, so we were able to appeal to the locally grown trend as well,” Banner said.
Banner said the team worked late nights and weekends from January until the competition, and essentially lived in the agriculture building. It even accidentally set off alarms in the computers labs multiple times for staying too late.
The students chose the product name “Liora,” which is Hebrew for ‘light.’ Banner said the product was meant to be a “shining light on the future of the lemon industry.”
Agribusiness senior and competitor Taylor Hansard said some people didn’t like the name.
“We had one judge that told us it didn’t remind him of lemons,” Hansard said. “Then we asked him when he heard ‘Cuties’ if he thought of clementines, and he said no.”
The name grew on people though, and Hansard said the judges asked how many times they had practiced, because they could tell the difference. One of the biggest difficulties during the competition was appealing to a mostly Midwestern judging panel, consisting of representatives from companies such as The Monsanto Company and John Deere.
“California was such a different population to market to versus the Midwest one,” Hansard said. “I know with (Purdue University) they had a salami and cheese that they were marketing to natural foodies. And if you were to market salami to a natural foodie in California they’d say you’re crazy.”
Alison Hart, an agribusiness senior who created the PowerPoint presentation for the competition, said the team often sang “Pretty Girl Rock” by Keri Hilson and “California Girls” by the Beach Boys to get themselves excited in the face of Midwest adversity.
The differences between the Midwest and California became apparent during the competition.
“We were promoting our product at Farmers’ Market,” Hart said. “And some of the judges were slightly confused about that, because farmers markets in the Midwest are completely different from farmers markets in California and we had to explain it.”
Agribusiness graduate student Hayley Loehr said Cal Poly was the only school in the finals that didn’t have a land grant from their state — meaning it did not get money from its state to fund programs for research and development. The other schools also had faculty advisers who played a much bigger role in their teams, whereas Cal Poly was nearly completely student-run because it had graduate student advisers, Loehr said.
“All the other schools we were competing against had Ph.D.s because they had teachers who were running this team, and (were) with them at all of their practices,” Loehr said. “With us, we meet as a group of students. So it wasn’t ‘Don’t come and you’re not passing.’ We’re not forcing, but everyone’s there.”
The top six teams, in ranking order, were: Cal Poly, Purdue University, Kansas State University, Ohio State University, Texas A&M and Michigan State University.
Loehr also said Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong was the former dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University.
“So we beat his alumni,” Loehr said. “He made the right choice — he made a step up.”