If communications & marketing was a fruit?

A colleague from HR stumped me with this question earlier today. He was doing prep work for an upcoming workshop and found an eager volunteer for his dipstick test. After giving it some thought, (and ignoring my personal favourite – mango) I answered grapes. It didn’t end there. His next question was, naturally, why?

I justified the analogy by highlighting some exceptional qualities of the fruit. a) A bunch of grapes looks sightly and balanced; b) Sweet and tart at the same time, grapes can easily be part of a fruit or vegetable salad; c) Grapes enable us to enjoy an almost endless variety of wine; d) Grapes are indispensable part of our food basket in their various shapes and forms - wine, jam, juice, jelly, grape seed extract, raisins, vinegar, and grape seed oil.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll pass up the temptation to expound on likeness of these qualities to the Communications & Marketing function in an organisation. Yet, I remain curious about the relevance of my analogy. It would be interesting to get some more perspective on this. How would you answer this question?

Image By Vbecart (Own work)