How Digital Attention Is Not a Vanity Metric; Phil Gruszka, Founder of Gruszka Consulting, Explains

BAKERSFIELD, CA - How can we continue to fuel demand? This question is posed across all aspects of the produce industry, with both new and traditional strategies taking root to achieve the common goal.

Through a series of recent AndNowUKnow articles, Phil Gruszka, Founder of Gruszka Consulting, recently dove into the importance of persistence and consistency in fresh and how silence in marketing often comes at a cost. Now, the industry vet is exploring another crucial facet of fresh produce, emphasizing how digital attention is a key marker of consumer interest.

In today’s marketing landscape, demand is driven on a digital scale—and the digital world is not something that should be minimized or ignored.

“Too often, numbers like social media impressions, video views, or website visits are brushed aside, questioned, or discounted, because they don’t directly convert into sales overnight. This view undersells the role of marketing in general and its digital component in shaping consumer behavior, influencing retail buyers, and ultimately protecting the value of produce categories,” Phil explains, revealing how this advantageous vehicle for stimulating demand often goes overlooked.

As Phil goes on to note, consumers don’t just wake up one morning and decide to buy a new apple variety, a clamshell of grapes, or a bag of carrots due to a single ad. Instead, their decisions are shaped long before they enter a store, and this begins with repeated digital encounters. While that journey may not appear in a weekly sales report, it’s a clear and measurable reflection of a brand’s presence and long-term potential.

Attention Is the New Shelf Space

“For decades, CPG and produce companies have fought for space on physical shelves. I fondly remember, in a previous life, sales calls for Hostess Twinkies and Cupcakes vying for more shelf space. Today, digital feeds are just as important. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and retail apps are the new ‘front end caps’ where consumer preference is built,” Phil continues. “When packaged snack foods dominate those spaces, produce gets pushed to the background. But when fresh produce companies step in and show up consistently, they claim visibility in the very channels where tomorrow’s buying habits are being formed.”

And it’s not just consumers who notice this digital attention. It also demonstrates a brand’s success for retailers.

Phil illustrates a supplier walking into a retail pitch with two scenarios: one in which a supplier can highlight its product, quality, availability, and competitive pricing, and another in which a supplier can provide all of that information, in addition to strong consumer engagement across digital channels.

“Which of those scenarios gives the buyer confidence that stocking your product will drive movement?” Phil asks. “Digital attention is evidence. It reduces risk for buyers and strengthens your seat at the table.”

Measuring What Matters

Even with the digital world's heightened impact, produce companies don’t need to become social media giants overnight. What they do need to do, Phil emphasizes, is move past dismissing metrics as “empty numbers.”

“The real task is measuring the right things: How many people are seeing your brand? How often do they encounter it? Are they interacting, clicking, saving, commenting, sharing? Can you connect digital campaigns to retail activations, like QR codes, shoppable recipes, or retailer tie-ins? When tracked together, these metrics can highlight a period of strong brand momentum,” Phil says.

Avoiding the Silence Trap

For fresh produce companies, digital attention is a year-round strategy that should not be limited to the seasonality of one’s product portfolio.

“As I wrote in The Cost of Silence, the absence of a story quickly reduces products to commodities,” adds Phil. “Digital platforms are the fastest way to avoid that silence. A brand that disappears online for a season risks being forgotten in weeks. A brand that keeps showing up, even modestly, remains visible and relevant. This is still true for seasonal fruits and vegetables. The momentum you have diligently built on social media platforms during the season needs to be nurtured even when your product is not on the shelf. Maintenance levels of awareness advertising will help you build an audience even in the off-season.”

Digital attention has already driven real-world impact across multiple categories, such as blueberries gaining traction on TikTok, Avocados From Mexico’s digital-first Super Bowl strategy, successful potato campaigns with QR codes linking to video content, and geotargeted apple ads causing local demand spikes.

The Call to Action

“These examples show that digital attention isn’t noise—it’s fuel. And when aligned with retail strategy, it’s measurable in movement,” Phil concludes. “Digital impressions, video views, and web traffic are not vanity metrics. They are signals of reach, relevance, and recognition. They show that your story is being seen and heard—even if the payoff isn’t immediate.”

The lesson across Phil’s multi-part series is clear: persistence builds value, silence erodes it, and digital attention accelerates recognition when applied consistently. The question he poses for every grower and marketer is: Will you be patient enough to let those impressions add up?

In fresh produce, we know better than any other industry that growth takes time. The day you plant the seed is not the day you enjoy the fruit. The same can be said for the digital marketing strategies of today—but the payoff is certainly worth the long-term investment.