What is Del Monte Smoking?

The lunch room at my new place of employment is populated by a few magazines including one back issue of Good Housekeeping. I personally am not a huge fan of this magazine, but it passes the time while waiting for the eye doctor when my only other choices are Cosmo or Southern Living. The former I don’t want to be and the latter I don’t want to do. Anyway . . . I was flipping through this five-month-old issue when I came across an ad for canned peaches. Now I don’t eat canned fruit. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to eat canned fruit. But I understand that it has been around for a long time and a lot of people like it. What I don’t understand is this ad.

Perhaps you’ve seen it? There is a picture of a large fresh peach and the copy basically reads (I’ll have to paraphrase here because I couldn’t tear the ad out of the magazine), “Why buy fresh fruit and throw money away when you can buy canned?” Ummm. So to Del Monte buying fresh fruit equals throwing money away? Well sure it does if you don’t actually eat the stuff and let it go bad. I occasionally can’t make it through all of the spinach in the bag and have to throw a couple of handfuls out, but that doesn’t mean I consider it a waste of money to buy it in the first place. It just means the next time I buy it I make more of a concerted effort to actually eat it all before it turns to green goo.

We all know that Del Monte needs to sell the fruit they’ve canned, but an ad campaign extolling the virtues of canned fruit makes more sense than bashing the idea of fresh. Are there really consumers who will read the ad and say, “Hey! You know what? They’re right. No more fresh peaches for me. I’m going to buy canned. Thanks, Del Monte!” Come to think of it, judging by all the fast food lunches that go walking past my desk everyday, they might be more attuned to the average American eater than I am.