Who’s Chiquita brand?

The company was created on March 30; United Fruit Company issued its first annual shareholders report a year later, in 1900, and was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1903.

The ships were painted white to reflect the tropical sun and maintain the optimum temperature for bananas, and were referred to as “The Great White Fleet”.

With her festive and fun personality, Miss Chiquita was the resident expert on everything you ever wanted to know about bananas, she helped to teach consumers about the great nutritional value of bananas and how to ripen them.

She was a big celebrity, making guest appearances on top radio shows, including Fred Allen and Alec Templeton’s programs. Other broadcast personalities who invited Miss Chiquita to join them on the air included Charlie McCarthy and Bert Lahr. As the decades progressed, so did Miss Chiquita’s look, as she was slowly brought to life.

The chances are you can sing, or at least hum, a few bars of the famous Chiquita Banana jingle.

The song first hit the airwaves in 1944 when Miss Chiquita made her debut. The catchy tune was written to help teach Americans how to ripen and use bananas, which were, at the time, an exotic tropical fruit. The song was created by an ad agency team led by Robert Foreman. The singer in the original 1944 recording was Patti Clayton, the first in a long line of Miss Chiquitas.

At its peak, the jingle was played 376 times a day on radio stations across the United States, and was one of the most successful commercial jingles of all time.

In 1999, we updated the lyrics to make the jingle more relevant for consumers and to highlight the nutritional benefits of eating a Chiquita banana every day:
Extract: “I’m Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say – I offer good nutrition in a simple way – When you eat a Chiquita you’ve done your part – To give every single day a healthy start – Underneath the crescent yellow – You’ll find vitamins and great taste – With no fat, you just can’t beat ’em – You’ll feel better when you eat ’em – They’re a gift from Mother Nature and a natural additional to your table – For wholesome, healthy, pure bananas – look for Chiquita’s label!”

In 2015 we launched the latest version to make the jingle more relevant for today’s consumers and highlight the new brand positioning, Just Smile!

Copyrights: Lyrics © 1999 Chiquita Brands L.L.C. “Chiquita Banana” (words and music by Garth Montgomery, Leonard Mackenzie, William Wirges) under license to Chiquita Brands L.L.C. © 1945 Shawnee Press Inc.

• Chiquita took delivery of the first of 16 refrigerated ships in its modern fleet and invested in major banana expansion in the Atlantic zone of Costa Rica.
• In 1991, Chiquita built a state-of-the-art banana processing plant in Costa Rica.
• In 1992. Chiquita’s refrigerated ships were fitted with new controlled atmospheres to further slow the ripening process and enhance the quality of fruit shipments.
• In 1994, The first Chiquita farms were certified by the Rainforest Alliance’s Better Banana Project.

• In 2001, Chiquita & IUF, COLSIBA, signed a historic agreement on labor rights for banana workers. Wal-Mart named Chiquita its Environmental Supplier of the Year.
• In 2004, All of the Chiquita-owned farms in Latin America were certified to the SA8000 labor standard. Chiquita earned a “Corporate Citizen of the Americas Award” from the Organization of American States for the Nuevo San Juan home-ownership project in Honduras.

We’ve aimed to drive home our brand’s key message of fun through vibrant and light-hearted visual storytelling. Our tagline embodies both banana category leadership and fun!

Other taglines:  “hello yellow,” “nobody has ever eaten a banana angry” and “work on your curve.”

The European adaptation was a new multi-channel campaign leveraging local specificities “Always the Best Choice”.

This is the concept that inspired the multi-subject campaign, developed to describe in a fresh, dynamic and playful way that the Chiquita banana iconic Blue Sticker’s, with its typical smile and great taste, always makes everyone agree.

The new brand campaign coincided with the results of the Brand Love Study by Smarty Pants. This ground-breaking study, now in its 9th year, identifies the brands that capture the heart of parents and their kids across America. Chiquita was included for the very first time in the study, and was chosen by parents as the most loved banana brand. It ranked #14 among Parents Top 50 brands within 347 brands and across 20 categories.

We needed a fresh summer campaign, and it just so happened that the sun would transform into a giant banana shape for most of North America to see during the solar eclipse in August 2017. In what was our most successful campaign: Chiquita branded the actual sun.

She was also inducted into the 2018 Advertising Week Madison Avenue Walk of Fame in 2018, which celebrates the finest advertising icons in the industry. And, in 2019, Miss Chiquita once more joined the Madison Avenue Walk of Fame, this time to celebrate her 75th anniversary.

Later that year, Miss Chiquita was also voted among the 10 “sexiest” brand mascots, according to Beyond her festive appearance, Miss Chiquita is also a major advocate for the Chiquita brand. Her mission was — and still is — to demonstrate the fun side of healthy snacking.