Author: Tracey McAlpine
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Last night I attended the UK launch of The Female Social Network, a movement set to empower women throughout the world

When I left the event, I was handed a lovely goodie bag which contained, as well as The Female Social Network magazine and beautiful sweatshirt, a pineapple.  Obviously, I was thrilled to be given such a lovely bag of gifts, but a pineapple?  I love pineapple, but I was intrigued as to why it was there.

On reading The Female Social Network magazine I found out why, and it inspired me to share the story.  This copy is taken directly from the magazine.

TFSN and the Pineapples

Pineapple farmers in Australia had a prickly problem – they produced more pineapples than Australians were eating.  Domestic consumption was low, export markets unstable and pineapple farmers were being left with a problem of over-supply.

Pineapple farmers wanted more Aussies eating pineapples, but their marketing and advertising campaigns weren’t doing the trick.

Enter The Female Social Network (TFSN)

Using our unique identification IP and data science, TFSN identified four women as ‘Effective Opinion Leaders’ (EOLs) from a pool of 2.6 million Australian mums.  We took these four mums to the pineapple farms to learn about pineapples.  It was fun and they learnt a few things along the way:

Pineapples have little capes put on them, so they don’t get sunburnt!

Pineapples are a cluster of hundreds of fruitlets.

Pineapples contain Bromelain, which is used in the IVF process and cancer treatment and is a great natural cough suppressant and a sports recovery agent.  (Remember that last point….)

So, what could these four mums do to solve the pineapple problem?

Sweet Success

In six weeks, we helped the pineapple collective sell an unprecedented 2.2 million pineapples.  In fact, pineapple farmers ran out of pineapples for the first time in a very long time.

How did this happen?

The four mums we identified as EOLs returned from their tropical expedition and spread the word among their networks about the benefits of pineapples.

Through word-of-mouth marketing and the recommendation economy, four mums persuaded 1 million mums to swap oranges out for pineapples during half-time at junior sporting events around Australia.

One of the biggest selling points for the mums was that pineapples are a great sports recovery agent (as we noted earlier).  Another was that mums were given plenty of tips on how to slice and dice pineapple and recipes for interesting and tasty ways to use the fruit.

It doesn’t get much better than that!

So, there you have it, the power of the pineapple and women sharing their knowledge.  Collectively we can all bring about change, and The Female Social Network are leading the way.