Recently I was doing the professional equivalent of “doom scrolling” by taking my sweet time looking at LinkedIn posts early one morning before diving into some work. In between the usual career achievements and accomplishments, I saw a pile of bananas. Before I had time to read the caption, my brain started thinking of a million and one questions, especially because the bananas were branded.
Is the stamp specially made for bananas to avoid bruising? Is the ink food safe? Did the team have to measure bananas to make sure they got the stamp dimensions right?
In all my days of casino marketing, I had up until that moment never seen someone add a logo on a piece of fruit, but by-golly, it has finally been done. I don’t want my tone of disbelief to be misinterpreted – I thought this was a clever idea, even more so when I explain the “why” of the attention grabbing bananas. You see, the branded fruit was created by Eclipse Gaming to support a title that, you guessed it, centers around bananas at this year’s WIGA conference.
This wasn’t my first run in with Eclipse and Banana Bash, as we (Flip The Switch editor Josh and I) were able to chat with their team at last year’s G2E about the new title. At the annual gaming conference, Eclipse Gaming deployed another unique marketing tactic – they would spray the smell of bananas by their booth to draw people in towards the cabinet (read that coverage here).
Obviously, some banana smell-effects take some money and work to set up. The banana stamp, on the other hand, is arguably as clever of a tactic while also being much more budget friendly and presumably easier to execute. Like nearly everything in business, when it comes down to it, budget is the most important factor. That’s simply because you need to know what the property or company you are promoting is willing to spend and then begin looking within that range.
Once your dollar amount is decided, you know if you have a budget for the banana smelling air or something more like the banana stamp. From a marketing practitioner perspective, I think the banana stamp was a genius move just by the budget numbers alone. Obviously, I don’t have access to the books of Eclipse Gaming, but I was a cashier for a decade and know the price of a banana (PLU 4011). I’d be willing to make a bet this is one of the cheapest campaigns a slot company has deployed in recent years and I’d be willing to make a second bet that it has had the most favorable budget to impact ratio.
By adding the name of the game to a quick and easy snack, conference attendees had a walking reminder, at least until they finished eating, of the creative marketing idea and the game it was promoting. Although the banana didn’t last very long in real life, the memory of the standout idea and appreciated snack will have a longer imaginary shelflife than some of the more underappreciated physical trinkets like koozies, pens, or stress balls.
Now this isn’t to say that the majority of everything branded is bad, more so that a lot of it could have used some additional thought. As a practitioner, I don’t need a bunch of tchotchkes with random company logos- I’ll take a snack all day.
Now, if a casino were to hand me a banana with their property logo on it, I may crash out. As a player, I love thoughtful gifts with casino logos to remember my adventures.
One of the best “earn and get” offers that I have received over the past year was for a beach towel from Binions Casino. If you know me, you know I always reserve some time for Binions during any trip back to Vegas. I love the memories with friends that I’ve made here, the extra cold air conditioning, and the fact that some of the bartenders still know my name from when I worked across the street. As soon as I received the postcard mailer alerting me to the towel promotion, I knew I needed to get my paws on one, and thankfully I had a trip on the books during the qualifying dates.
My personal ties to the property aside, I want to give some more fan fare to the actual towel. I’m not just talking about a single color towel with a stitched logo on one end, I am talking about a fully printed (in color!) towel that shows off some of the personality of the property. Instantly, it reminded me of the type of souvenir towels that were popular in the 2000s in all the best ways. Once I arrived in Vegas later that month, I hit the ground running, earning my towel on the first day, mostly because I was afraid they’d run out. Spoiler: They had hundreds.
For casinos that put thought into their gifts instead of just slapping on a logo, players like myself will make a concerted effort to snag the things they want. For some of us, that may look like a fully branded towel we’ll refuse to use and instead just look at, while others are playing for quality baseball caps or passport holders with more artistic logo inclusions.
