Farmer John has extended its brand from Dodger Stadium out to the parking lot.
At the Dodgers’ home opener April 13, the meat packing company and ad agency Mendelsohn Zien in West Los Angeles unveiled the Farmer John Tailgater, a giant truck that serves free samples of smoked sausages in the parking lot before games.
At the games, the Tailgater will promote the sale of Farmer John smoked sausages, a new offering this season. Previously, only Dodger Dogs were sold in the stadium. The campaign will include TV ads and in-store signage in addition to the truck.
Ian Lavallee, senior product manager at Farmer John, said the company eventually plans to extend its brand beyond meat into “a line of grilling and tailgating products.” The Tailgater will be the main advertising medium for promoting these new products, which are still in development.
“This truck will go to a long list of marquee events, including games, championships, charitable events, sales calls to local grocers, tailgating opportunities at the Coliseum and Rose Bowl, and an Arizona Cardinals game,” Lavallee told the Business Journal. “But the Dodgers game was its first public appearance.”
The truck features a grill-inspired paint job on the outside and a VIP lounge on the inside with leather couches, big-screen TVs, a sports score ticker, video games and a faux turf floor.
Lavallee declined to reveal the cost of the Tailgater, but said it was pretty low because Farmer John already owned the truck, which they used for store openings and employee events. He expects the Tailgater will have a productive marketing life of five years.
Based in Los Angeles, Farmer John is a subsidiary of Hormel Foods Corp.
Flowery Praise
Pollack PR Marketing Group in Century City has a budding new client in Fiesta Parade Floats, a float builder for the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Based in Irwindale, Fiesta has won the Rose Parade’s highest honor, the Sweepstakes Trophy, 17 consecutive times. The company specializes in props and floral design, with clients including the Bellagio and Mandalay Bay casinos in Las Vegas, Crystal Court South Coast Plaza shopping mall in Costa Mesa and Disneyland in Anaheim.
Pollack will focus on media coverage related to the floats for Fiesta and the float sponsors, said Will Ostedt, vice president at the agency. Fiesta will build approximately a dozen floats this year for clients such as Kaiser Permanente and Nature’s Balance.
‘Snippets’ Comeback
MarkeTech, a business-to-business PR agency in West Hills, has revived its Snippets du Jour e-mail newsletter after a hiatus of several years.
Snippets are a selection of tech news items, tips, tools and research. Originally, they were intended for MarkeTech clients to use as Web content on their sites, articles in company newsletters, blog material or conversational ice-breakers.
In the new incarnation of Snippets, MarkeTech will offer them to subscribers, either by e-mail or with a link. As in the past, the content can be repurposed as long as sources are credited.
The timing for the relaunch was inspired by the popularity of short communications on the Internet, exemplified by Twitter and its brief tweets.
“The time for a Snippets revival is right,” MarkeTech President Joan Naidish said in a statement. “While they’re not exactly tweets, they do convey useful information in a bite-sized form.”
Wongdoody’s Wager
Culver City-based ad shop Wongdoody is betting on black and white with its new TV and print campaign for client Full Tilt Poker, an online poker practice site.
The monochrome campaign promotes the idea that playing on Full Tilt’s Web site will improve a player’s game.
Since Wongdoody took the Full Tilt account in 2007, the site reports that it has grown in the number of users about 350 percent per month. Full Tilt now ranks as the second most popular poker site, up from sixth place in 2007.
The campaign includes 10 print ads and nine TV commercials. The television spots were directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris.
Agencies & Accounts
McCann Erickson West has won the account for LifeLock Inc., a Phoenix-based identity theft protection company. McCann offices in Salt Lake City and on the Miracle Mile will manage the account, which will include strategic consulting, online, events and traditional advertising. … Whit Friese, who spent 17 years at Leo Burnett and is fresh from producing the TNT series about advertising “Trust Me,” has just joined Troika as creative director. He will oversee the ad campaigns for the shop’s entertainment clients. Specifically, he will work to promote Hub, a children’s TV network premiering this fall from Discovery Channel and Hasbro. … The Hispanic Public Relations Association, based in Los Angeles, will produce its first Hispanic Public Relations & Social Media Marketing Conference in Dallas on May 10-12. The conference will focus on case studies. “The upcoming U.S. Census and the continued growth of social media will underscore the importance of the national Hispanic market,” John Echeveste, HPRA co-founder and partner at VPE in Pasadena, said in a statement. … MarketShare Partners, a Los Angeles ad statistics firm, has hired Philippe Lebard as senior vice president of strategy. Before joining MarketShare, Lebard was a director of Deloitte Consulting’s consumer marketing group. …PR agency Hill & Knowlton has named Mike Nelson a vice president for health care in the Santa Monica office. Previously, he was in-house consultant on patient advocacy and public policy for Roche in Basel, Switzerland.
Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.
