• November 11, 2013

Chiquita bananas and the minions are teaming up again for the DVD release of “Despicable Me 2” in a sweepstakes this week that uses a new technology to determine whether the person behind the mouse is, in fact, a human being.

The sweepstakes, which will be promoted via stickers on the bananas in store, uses a new verification tool that encourages people to play a simple game (in this case, putting bananas in a cart) to verify their humanity, rather than typical CAPTCHA technology (which encourages a user to retype a visually distorted word or phrase). 

“Everyone hates CAPTCHA,” Reid Tatoris, co-founder of Are You A Human, the company behind the game, tells Marketing Daily. “We have a technology that allows for a user to interact with a game for the same purpose. It’s a much more pleasurable experience.”

It’s also better for the sponsoring brand, Tatoris says. “We’ve done a lot of brand testing, and we’ve seen a 300% lift in brand recall over rich media,” he says. “They remember your brand, and they remember it in a positive light.”

Chiquita originally partnered with the movie on its theatrical release, offering in-store point-of-sale materials, supported by social, digital and other marketing elements. For the DVD release, the company will issue a limited-time only banana sticker, consumer contest and in-store, online and print advertising campaigns, according to news reports. 

Chiquita officials were not available for comment.