Crunch Time
Come Election Day, one candidate will win all the marbles. And come Inauguration Day, he’ll rake in all the chips.
A campaign set to launch in late October will place a virtual suggestion box on the Facebook product page for the patriot-themed “Stripes & Blues” chip variety from Terra Chips. Visitors will be able to inscribe on a virtual chip their suggestions for changes that the incoming White House resident should set into motion during his first months in office. Those suggestions will be housed on the site, available for others to read.
In January 2009, they will be aggregated and sent to the new office holder when he moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, along with a case of Terra’s Stripes & Blues, a combo pack of red sweet potato chips, blue potato chips and chips made from red-and-white striped beets.
“The product has traditionally been associated with patriotism and July Fourth,” says Darren Gillmor, vice president of business development at agency Story Worldwide, the agency executing the campaign for Terra parent Hain Celestial Group. “They said they wanted to branch out and leverage another time of the year when we display our love of country.”
In this year, that time seemed likely to be the space between the election and the installation of our next set of leaders.
“Terra Chips’ slogan is ‘Never ordinary,’ and this is going to be an election that is also far from ordinary,” Gillmor says. “No matter who wins, we’re going to end up with a historic result. So we’re inviting Facebook members to become presidential advisers and chip in with their ‘chip-inions.’ ”
Visitors to http://apps.facebook.com/presidentialadvisor will be able to write their suggestions (concisely!) on the chip color of their choice. Through the branded Facebook app they can also add their chips to their own profile pages, where they can lead their friends back to the Terra page.
It was unclear at press time whether visitors would be able to go back and file a second “chip-inion” — thus, in effect, double dipping.
