• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, June 16, 2009

As part of a new campaign encouraging consumers to drink OJ to help get their recommended daily fruit servings, Tropicana Pure Premium will donate up to 250,000 servings to the U.S. Department of Agriculture kids' food programs.

The "Get Your Fruit On!" campaign, launching this month to tie in with National Fruit and Vegetable Month, looks to get the word out that 7 in 10 adults, as well as most children, are not consuming the USDA-recommended four fruit servings -- and that an eight-ounce glass of OJ delivers two of those servings. "Surprisingly, we've learned a majority of orange juice drinkers are unaware that 100% orange juice contributes to their daily fruit intake," commented Tropicana CMO Andy Horrow in the PepsiCo brand's announcement of the campaign.

Tropicana will donate OJ servings to the USDA's Summer Food Service Program, which provides free meals and snacks for nearly 2 million low-income children at about 31,000 schools, community centers and camps throughout the country during the summer vacation weeks. Thereafter, the brand will donate 16 servings to the USDA's low-income-area School Breakfast Program for each of the first 5,000 visitors to Tropicana.com who register and pledge to increase their fruit intake. Those first 5,000 online participants will also receive a coupon for a free, 64-ounce carton of Tropicana Pure Premium.

The site is also offering tips for getting one's daily fruit servings offered by dietician Elizabeth Ward, author of The Pocket Idiot's Guide to the New Food Pyramids. Despite the recession, total orange juice sales have continued to rise modestly (up 1.9% for the four-week period ending April 11 versus the same period last year, per A.C. Nielsen). However, non-reconstituted (not-from-concentrate) OJ's lead in the marketplace has been narrowed by increasing purchases of cheaper, reconstituted OJ, according to The Wall Street Journal.