Winning Hearts and MindsWhile Running An Election
The Edwards Baking Co. gourmet dessert line needed to extend brand equity from an established base in institutional and delivery segments to a stronger position on grocery shelves.
Was there an idea big enough to accelerate a marketing task that would ordinarily take years and tens of millions in media dollars?
THE PROGRAM
A BREAKTHROUGH IDEA BY POPULAR VOTE
Edwards should poll the electorate, generate grassroots buzz, get state officials behind the brand, provoke media noise, and extend excitement to all 50 states. Oh, and move product as well!
The Please Pass the Pie campaign was born—nothing less than a national lobby to name an “Official State Pie” in each of 48 states that still do not have one. The first showdown came in Florida after Sen. Larcenia Bullard and Rep. Dan Gelber got an official state pie bill passed out of the legislative committee.
At the same time, our strategists stoked the excitement on the grassroots level with an Interactive Voting Website and Informative Podcasts. As the floor vote officially came to a head, consumers were invited to have their say at the “American Pie Festival” in Celebration, FL.
THE ROLLOUT
A BLITZ OF MEDIA AND PR
For months, Edwards garnered huge publicity and word-of-mouth mileage:
- Needing no persuasion, local, national and trade media gleefully picked up on the need for each state to have an official pie. Publicity spilled over the border to Ontario and Yahoo! News publicized the “Florida question” on the Internet.
- At the state capitol in Tallahassee, legislators officially cast their votes. At the “American Pie Festival”, consumers enjoyed themselves with eating contests while casting their ballots in the lighthearted mock election.
- Rollouts to California, Chicago, Baltimore, and Seattle followed. ABC-TV “Eyewitness” coverage of the event in Los Angeles delivered over half a million impressions. At the end of Phase I, votes for local favorites were cast in four states.
THE RESULTS
A SWEET VICTORY FOR BRAND EQUITY
It was a year when Edwards also snatched the annual National Pie contest hands down.
The Please Pass the Pie partnership gained a victory, symbolic but huge, after the Florida legislature named Key Lime the official state pie…By the oddest coincidence, Key Lime Pie is Edwards’ best-selling product.
The imaginative strategy of wrapping the brand in the flag and affirming that Edwards was as American as, well…apple pie.
Clearly, Edwards was well on the way to gaining solid Brand Equity as preferred dessert choice in the minds of Consumers, Trade and the Media.
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“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something else.”
“Whether B2B or B2C, I believe passionately that good marketing essentials are the same. We are all emotional beings looking for relevance, context, and connection.”
“I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.”
