Jerky Match: Meat snack marketers borrow some moves from professional wrestling.

In this corner, Slim Jim, the undisputed champ of the $204 million meat snack business with a 19 percent market share.

In this corner, The Ostrich.

Yes, Protos Foods is bringing ostrich to the meat snack arena, and borrowing a trick from Slim Jim to do it. Greensburg, PA-based Protos introduced WWF meat snacks in 7-Eleven stores this fall via a licensing deal with World Wrestling Federation, Stamford, CT. Protos’ flagship meat snack, Ostrim, targets hardcore athletes and sells in nutrition centers, health food stores, and health foods sections in c-stores.

“We tell retailers, `Don’t put them next to Slim Jims because people won’t understand the differential in price,'” says marketing and communications manager Frank Catanzano. (Ostrich is leaner but costs more than beef.)

But C-stores account for 41 percent of meat snack sales, and Protos wanted a bigger bite. The company got clearance in October to sell WWF Meat Snack sticks and beef jerky into Dallas-based Southland Corp.’s 5,600 7-Eleven stores. Bearing the tagline, “Who said we don’t have good taste?” and photos of wrestlers Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, the snacks are in nearly 3,000 7-Elevens now and rolling into club stores.

Couponing and pre-shipper packs kick in this year, and Protos will sample snacks at WWF’s Fan Fest in March to “ten thousand screaming fans,” Catanzano says. Protos handles marketing in-house; designer Natalie Britt at Carton Service, Shelbyville, OH, designed packaging and print ads.

Fans buy about $400 million in WWF-licensed goodies annually. The federation gets 10 percent in royalties.

WWF’s wrestlers don’t endorse the snacks, which have more beef than Ostrim and cost the same as Slim Jim. That’s the job of Ostrim marketing rep Kurt Angle, who turned down a WWF contract after winning Olympic Gold in ’96. As the license was negotiated, Angle auditioned again and made it.

SLIM SLAM

“A lot of companies can pull themselves up on licensed equity, but it’s equity they rent,” says Jeff Slater, vp-marketing at Slim Jim parent Goodmark Foods. “[Protos’s products will] get a lot of distribution, but will it sell?”

Slater should know. Among meat snacks, Slim Jim invented the wrestling hold, and just keeps flexing harder via rival wrestling league WCW, owned by Turner Sports. A fall online sweepstakes gave away a party with “Macho Man” Randy Savage and his sidekick, Gorgeous George. WCW fans 13 and older entered via slimjim.com or wcw.com to win a hometown party for 100 friends; 500 first-prize winners got Macho Man tins of Slim Jims. Countertop and shipper displays in c-stores and supermarkets carried a toll-free number for entry.

Slim Jim marketer Goodmark Foods has spent the last 18 months pumping up promotions, including Xtreme Sports guerrilla tie-ins and sponsorships of the NBA’s Hoop It Up, Busch Racing, and the Aggressive Skating Association. “We’re putting more time and energy against promotion,” Slater says. “Our promotions manager [Amy Carroll] has become an expert in a lot of tactics.”

Take guerrilla marketing. Goodmark didn’t want to pay the fees to sponsor the ESPN X-Games, so it brought Savage to the games. An ESPN interviewer slipped on-air and called him a sponsor. Slater credits p.r. firm Richard French & Associates, Raleigh, NC, for “really helping us leverage our agreements.”

Goodmark rides its “personal service agreements” with Savage and stunt biker Dave Mirra so hard it gets a WCW and X-Games halo. The company also presses for promos as part of ad buys, Slater says. (Slim Jim got signage, ads, and a VIP party as sponsor of WCW’s Halloween Havoc pay-per-view event.)

A fall in-pack sweeps gave away 500,000 copies of new videogames featuring Slim Jim product placement. Three extreme sports games from 989 Studios include Slim Jim’s logos on bikes and banners throughout the games. Retail displays showed the Slim Jim Guy on a Jet Moto bike, a snowboard, and a motorcycle.

Distribution is up via new channels like video stores, hardware stores – “anyplace snack foods are or should be,” Slater summarizes – as well as at traditional retailers. Goodmark has done well for two years convincing grocers to treat checkout lanes like mini c-stores, with wider product mix, Slater says.

Does ostrich faze Slim Jim? Hardly.

“Less than one percent of meat-snack sales are non-beef,” Slater says. “We’re focused on the 99 percent.”

Besides, “consumers are just not that educated about ostrich meat. It’s not like there’s an Ostrich Council spending $100 million or something. Consumers will consider turkey jerky, but that’s about it.”

That’s something to chew on.

Faced with defections from advertisers such as Coke, Wrigley, and AT&T who found the sex-and-violence quotient too high, the WWF promised late last year to drop-kick some of the envelope-pushing content of its TV programs. A few retailers are worried about WWF hijinks, says Protos Foods’ Frank Catanzano. Coast Guard buyers confirmed the guard hadn’t pulled ads from WWF programs before agreeing to sell Protos’ WWF snacks on base. “We told buyers, `We’re not any more in the know than anyone else, but WWF is softening programming,'” Catanzaro says.