• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 15, 2002

Here's a medium that's really outside the home... for awhile, anyway. As we've said before, when you're digging for media research, there's no telling what will pop up! Someone may want to bite into this...

An apple supplier in British Columbia for 75 years has recently introduced a technique that allows a logo to be imprinted onto the skin of an apple. Located near Vancouver, Kelowna Land and Orchard begin imprinting logos onto apples in late spring.

The process is simple. First, hearty apples are covered with a specially constructed bag. When the bags are removed in the fall, logo stencils are placed on each apple, which is left on the tree until it grows to full size. The decals are removed, and the logo or message is left on the fruit in white, while the rest of the fruit remains red.

"Using our established relationships with orchards in the U.S., Chile and New Zealand, we're able to offer logo apples to every corner of the world," says Richard Bullock, president of KLO. "And by using our cold-storage method, the apples can be logoed in the fall and kept for use at a later date."

For more information E-mail Justin Hanley at gleap@dccnet.com.