A few weeks before the federal election, True Fruits, a smoothie manufacturer from Bonn, named six of its juice flavors after the parties represented in the Bundestag.

Individual statements from the election manifestos are printed on it, but the company has come up with two of the demands.

The demand to abolish the statutory minimum wage is imposed on the FDP, and the Left Party wants shops to close at 9 p.m.

Jonas Jansen

Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.

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According to the fantasy, the AfD wants to naturalize only 1,500 migrants a year and the CDU wants to tax sugary foods and beverages more heavily.

The idea behind it, according to the campaign page, is “spoiled for choice”, mixed with a reference to your own company name - which of it is really true?

The campaign would be one of many companies are trying to address current issues.

But the marketing campaign gets a politically explosive note due to the reaction of the food giant Edeka.

The largest grocer in Germany has posted a picture on its channels in social networks such as Facebook or Instagram, where only the AfD bottle is shown.

"There is no space on the shelf to the right" is written above it and the note that the AfD smoothies would be sent back.

On the Internet, of course, this causes all kinds of reactions: In addition to criticism of True Fruits, even bringing out AfD bottles, Edeka is also hostile to wanting to keep democratically elected parties out of its stores.

At the same time there is praise for both sides, for example with statements such as “You don't have to treat democracy enemies democratically” to Edeka or “It's a shame that there are no more companies that make such clear statements”, addressed to True Fruits.

For True Fruits, Edeka's reaction is likely to have an advertising effect that can hardly be paid for.

Compared to earlier campaigns by the Bonn-based juice company, the political party bottles are still harmless in terms of content.

The reaction to Edeka, however, is not.

True Fruits has once again posted its bottles on Instagram in the design of an Edeka advertisement under the heading “We have no space on the shelf for political education”. “Dear Edeka, yes, we also think the AFD shit. But education is more important than embarrassing social signaling like you are trying to do here ... ”, the company writes. By this, the company means that Edeka, in turn, distances itself from the AfD primarily as an advertising effect in order to be positively received by the other, supposedly more important customer groups. In its own Instagram stories, the company targets its trading partner even more violently.

True Fruits is known for going so far with its advertising campaigns that enough people find themselves who think the company's actions are really terrible.

The motto is provocation, regardless of whether it is about penises painted with sun cream on the naked back of a woman ("Summer, when are you finally going to celebrate your cumback?", 2019), a black smoothie with the advertising phrase: "Seldom make it across the border" (2017 ) or the poster for the chia seed juice with the slogan "Shake in case of seed jams", which the City of Munich promptly banned along with two other posters (2016).

Provocation as an advertising medium

A petition under the keyword #truediskrimierung called on retail partners to remove the products from the range and collected more than 65,000 signatures in the process. For the company itself, the calculated excitement is often a blessing. The Bonn-based company even describes the phenomenon in their annual financial statements in the risk assessment: "The recurring discussion about our social media activities can also be seen as an opportunity or risk," it says.

The fuss surrounding the provocation is factored in. "It has been shown, however, that the excitement and the resulting heated discussion is conducive to our market and sales growth," says the last publicly available annual report for 2019. At that time, True Fruits was already struggling with the fact that there are now many There are copycat products from the smoothies, often under own brands, at significantly lower prices.

While the annual turnover of True Fruits in 2018 was 39.6 million euros, it was increased by 6 percent in the following year. The Bonners call themselves market leaders, the share of smoothies is almost two thirds of the market in this country. With around 30 employees, the company recently achieved an annual profit of over 7 million euros. The bottles are not produced in-house, but by the Baden-Württemberg manufacturer Streker Natursaft from Aspach, while the logistics company Nagel sells the bottles. True Fruits was founded by three college friends in 2006.

Sales may have increased as a result of the Corona crisis, as retail sales have risen sharply due to closed restaurants. According to the Association of the German Fruit Juice Industry (VdF), the more expensive products in particular have recently been well received. "We are observing the continuation of the trend towards high-quality not-from-concentrate juices in retail, so that the industry as a whole was able to record an increase in the value of juices sold by around 13 percent," said VdF Managing Director Klaus Heitlinger. Of course, this also includes classics such as apple or orange juice, a total of 332 fruit juice manufacturers in this country make around 3.2 billion euros in sales per year. The pureed fruits in the smoothies account for less than 200 million euros.