EU: Another three years of success for Mr Fruitness

These are the final days of the second three-year cycle of "Fruitness, enjoy it!" the campaign promoted by the European Union, the CSO (the Italian Market Gardening Services Centre) and the Italian State, aimed at showing children in Germany, the UK, Austria, Poland and Sweden that eating fresh fruit and keeping fit through sport is not only healthy but also enjoyable. The project, which was first launched in 2006 and then renewed in 2009, has focused in particular on five specific fruit varieties: pears, kiwis, peaches, nectarines and plums.

Numerous different activities and initiatives have been carried out in the last three years, always featuring Mr. Fruitness, the green-costumed super-hero testimonial, and his fantastic Fruit Team of different kinds of athletic fruit, who specialise in different sporting disciplines. The great success of the second triennial of "Fruitness, enjoy it!" is confirmed by the number of accesses to the official website, www.fruitness.eu. This has recently been restyled and rendered more interactive, and this - together with various attractive initiatives - has certainly contributed to notching up the estimated 70 million contacts made over the six years of the project. An important role has also been played by the numerous in-store promotion events held in major retail chains in the countries involved: these have involved giving free gadgets to children, plus info sheets, educational playing cards and images promoting the benefits of sport and healthy nutritional habits. Mr. Fruitness has also appeared in a big way on the main social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, attracting hundreds of fans and followers as well as the interest of both generalist and specialist media. And that's not all: in the 2009/2012 triennial too, the fruity hero has again been a protagonist of various major sector fair events, above all at Fruit Logistica in Berlin, backed up by intense public relations, sampling and web advertising activities.

To conclude the second triennial in style, Mr. Fruitness is making two special gifts to his young friends. The first is the videogame called "Fruit Bubble", available free on the multi-language site www.fruitness.eu. Here the aim is to shoot accurately at various fruits until they explode and disappear. The second gift is a smartphone App called "Learn and Cut" which can also be downloaded: this offers users the chance both to enjoy themselves and to discover all kinds of interesting things about fresh fruit. By choosing specific kinds of fruit, players learn about its nutritional characteristics and also get to play a game where they try to cut as much fruit as possible while avoiding the perils of malevolent flying sweets and buns.

From its launch in 2006, the combination of nutritional education and entertaining games has always been a central feature of the "Fruitness, enjoy it!" project, and still continues to arouse the enthusiasm of both children and parents all over the world.

For more information:
Alice Camellini
"Fruitness, enjoy it!"
Tel: +39 059-7863894