I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. If you can believe it, not so long ago, one of the hottest fruits, the avocado, toiled in obscurity. In her 2021 talk from TED at BCG, development visionary Zoe Carl Weifaca shares an idea to lift up farmers in developing

African countries by changing the trajectory for their crops using the same tools that worked

for the avocado.

Avocados. Americans love them. For what other food would you pay $15 to have someone bring it to

your table and mash it up in front of you? There's probably a hipster in Brooklyn right now

ordering a $15 avocado toast as we speak. And that's on the cheap side. Give me like $25. I mean,

that's insanity, honestly. So I have a question.

Why would people pay seemingly absurd prices for something so simple? Marketing.

There was probably a time in the U.S. when you couldn't pay people to eat avocados.

And actually, they were known as alligator

pairs. And then something changed. In the 1990s, there was a Super Bowl marketing campaign where

NFL players shared their favorite guacamole recipes. With the help of this over time,

avocados went from a relative obscurity in the U.S.

to one of the most consumed fruits.

Now, what's interesting about this is who is behind the campaign?

Californian avocado farmers.

They had a product.

They funded a highly visible and successful marketing campaign,

put money in their pockets,

and ultimately changed the way people eat.

So today I want to talk to you about how marketing can be a catalyst to improve the livelihoods of farmers, but not in the U.S. in Africa, and how the development community, and by that

I mean NGOs, philanthropists,

...