Caught Between a Rind and a Recall : Watermelon Promotion Proves a Lemon

If your July 4th holiday was less than idyllic, stop complaining. Consider Syd Leibovitch. His day off was really the pits.

Leibovitch, a 24-year-old Northridge realtor with a flair for promotion, drove around town on Independence Day with 7,000 pounds of watermelons on a flatbed truck, dropping them off one by one on local doorsteps with flyers bearing his picture and the message, “Happy 4th of July compliments of Syd Leibovitch, Country Club Properties.”

Leibovitch had distributed nearly 500 of the 750 watermelons when, finally, an alert homeowner stopped it.

“Syd, you’d better come in here,” the homeowner said.

Possible Trouble

That was when Leibovitch heard watermelons were being recalled for possible pesticide contamination.

At first, there was confusion about whether all watermelons were risky or just those from Vons supermarkets.

Leibovitch breathed a sigh of relief: His melons had come from a Lucky store. But his luck didn’t hold.

After many frantic phone calls, it eventually became clear that it didn’t matter where the melons came from. Despite spending more than $1,500 on the stunt, a change of plans was in order.

“My first concern is that nobody would die or anything,” he explained. “That’s not the best publicity.”

So Leibovitch set about trying to recover the watermelons, a task that soon proved impossible. Darkness was falling, and residents of the Northridge neighborhood he had covered were in no mood for strangers bearing wild tales of watermelons and real estate.

Takes Time

“You have no idea how long it takes to knock on a door, explain that you left the watermelon, that you want it back and that you’re not going to rob them,” Leibovitch said.

He only got back about 50 melons. So the realtor went home and typed up another flyer, this one explaining about the melon recall. Early Friday morning, he drove around and dropped the flyers off.

But Leibovitch was still stuck with quite a few watermelons. He found Lucky reluctant to take them back. And he didn’t want to insist, he said, because the store had been so nice in helping him get all those melons in the first place.

The realtor pointed out that obtaining 750 melons on July 4, a day when they are as popular as eggs at Easter, was no easy matter.

Disposal was a problem too. Leibovitch finally dropped the melons in several trash dumpsters around town, and then called it quits, except to worry that someone might sue him if they got sick.

Calls and Cards

The disappointment was especially bitter, compared to last year’s sweet success with watermelons, when the same promotional gambit on July 4 brought in dozens of calls and cards, the realtor said.

So, has Leibovitch, who estimates that he has sold $3.8 million worth of homes in Northridge this year alone, given up on watermelons as a way to make friends and influence people? Will he ever try it again?

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m skeptical.”