Chiquita is gamifying the experience of buying bananas from a store with a new mobile application that enters users into a sweepstakes when they check into a participating location.

The new Trading Card app was designed to also drive awareness of Chiquita’s Little League sponsorship and enables users to create trading cards using by uploading a photo. Additionally, the effort includes QR codes on bananas that can be scanned to download the app.

“Chiquita wanted to spur brand engagement,” said Adam Lavine, CEO of FunMobility, Pleasanton, CA. “As a sponsor for Little League, they wanted to reinforce that and drive consumers to their retailer partners.”

“Chiquita has a culture of differentiating itself with creative marketing,” he said. “This is a great promotion showing retailers that not only is Chiquita building engaging relationships with customers on mobile but that it is also driving consumers into stores that carry Chiquita products.

“By gamifying the experience of going to retailers that carry the product, this helps them better compete against competition that carries more or less the same product.”

App widgets
The app incorporates several AppWidgets developed by FunMobility, including a store locator which uses images of bananas to represent the retail locations on a map which carry Chiquita bananas.

Approximately 50 million bananas with QR codes on the labeling are available at Safeway, Publix, Walmart, BJ’s Wholesale Club and others.

The app also includes a check-in widget that rewards users with points every time they check in at a participating location carrying Chiquita bananas.

Users can also earn points by uploading photos of their children, creating Little League cards and posting them to social media sites. Additionally, points are awarded when users take a quiz about bananas.

“The more you engage with the app, the more you earn points,” Mr. Lavine said.

The Chiquita FanFun sweepstakes provides monthly prizes such as a $500 gift card to Dick’s Sporting Goods as well as grand prizes including a trip for four to visit the winner’s favorite professional baseball team in spring training based on the number of points users earn.

Consumers can download the free Trading Card App to enter the sweepstakes. Entries are also being accepted online at the FanFun Sweepstakes Web site.

The app also uses location to build a leader board showing users what their rank is based on how their score compares to others in the region or on a national basis.

Simplifying app development
Chiquita is one of the first brands to take advantage of new capabilities being offered by FunMobility enabling marketers to simply and easily add new functionality to their apps via AppWidgets.

The new services target marketers who are developing mobile apps and want to make them more by being able to experiment with new features.

FunMobility’s AppWidgets are cloud-based API plug-ins that enable marketers to launch new features any time they want without having to resubmit an app. A variety of AppWidgets across several categories are being offered by the company, including promotions and campaigns, feedback and loyalty, mini games and entertainment and lead generation.

“The problem that we are setting out to solve is that it is very complicated and expensive to develop mobile apps and promotions,” Mr. Lavine said. “The ecosystem is rather inflexible and any changes have to go through the Apple app store for approval.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York