How About an Award for Great Legs?
The annual industry ritual of self-salutation is fast approaching. There’ll be awards in the categories of best this, best that, and best them. However, none will honor what might be promotion’s superlative criteria: best “legs” – as in longevity.
Bloody truth is, promotion suffers from the “Double Dictum” phenomenon. Even big ideas tend to run but twice. First time it’s a fresh new idea. The second offering is a watered-down or overkilled version of the first, after which the event disappears into the creative crematorium.
Remember Pepsi Stuff, the award-winning premium incentive program touted as a Big Idea of 1996? It was credited with achieving sales and share gains, and its theme became tip-of-tongue (aided by the Harrier jet controversy). In 1997 it ran a second time, purportedly with continued success. By what logic in 1998, then, did PepsiCo. stuff Stuff for Pop Culture, an under-the-cap sweepstakes?
In describing Big Ideas, promotion people bandy terms like value-added, connectivity, ownability, or star power. But never legs. Why not? Isn’t longevity as important in promotion as it is in advertising? Shouldn’t a memorable promotion theme be as valuable to a brand as is the cowboy to Marlboro, or the rock to Prudential?
Some are. Consider a promotion with all those elements – and legs too! It’s the Pillsbury Bake-Off, about to celebrate 50 years of continuity without ever having been honored with an industry award.
Back in 1949, no lesser legends than Leo Burnett and John Pillsbury cooked up the notion of a baking contest. Their rationale was elementary: To enter their baking contest, people would have to buy their flour, right? Instead of discounts, they offered consumers fame and fortune. The Bake-Off defined consumer connectivity long before that term even entered our culture.
As for star power, how about lining up Arthur Godfrey, Art Linkletter, and Eleanor Roosevelt? The First Lady connection may have helped save the day at the inaugural Bake-Off in ’49. For the finals at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, 100 electric ovens that ran on AC current were installed.The hotel, however, ran on DC. What to do? Turns out wheelchair-ridden FDR had a private train platform in the Grand Central tunnel, directly below the hotel. Fortuitously, Pillsbury was authorized to drill down through the hotel to tap into railroad power.
The brand’s biggest challenge has been to keep the Bake-Off fresh, relevant to a changing constituency. In 1949 most bakers were stay-at-home moms. Today th ose are a dwindling minority. But Pillsbury marketers didn’t abandon the concept; they managed its evolution. Today it’s the Quick & Easy Bake-Off, but it’s still the Bake-Off. Today you can enter through a Web site, but it’s still the Bake-Off.
Asked what they remember about Pillsbury advertising, today’s consumers play back the Bake-Off. Ownability? Pillsbury does it best.
But the real frosting on the cake has been added value. In an industry where recipes are a critical aspect of doing business, a Pillsbury recipe is more. It’s the home-tested creation of a Bake-Off champion, a real person to whom consumers can relate.
The visionary Leo Burnett would later look beyond the icky-gooky that popped out of a refrigerated tube package and see a puckish character who could melt America’s heart like butter on a biscuit: the Pillsbury Doughboy.
How appropriate, then, that this year the Bake-Off notion is being further extended with the Doughboy Giggle-Off. Displays in stores feature Giggling T-Shirts that consumers can order for $16 and four proofs. Plus they can call 1-800-WE GIGGLE and record their own personal giggle to win $50,000. A gaggle of gigglers will be flown to LA for the finals.
Great legs just keep on going.
