Johnsonville Brings Summer of Sausage to Retail

Johnsonville rang in the 2019 grilling season with a patriotic "Summer of Sausage" marketing campaign comprising digital/social, TV, radio, experiential, packaging and P-O-P components with a plethora of account-specific activations and some cross-category partnerships.“We got a lot of traction, probably even more than we’ve ever gotten for Bratsgiving,” Johnsonville shopper marketing manager Stephanie Plehn told the Path to Purchase Institute.A major crux of the effort was a “shirts for sausage” incentive dangling a free T-shirt depicting the program’s “You Can’t Spell Sausage Without U.S.A.” message, but the key to success was that each retailer received a custom activation tailored both to its receptivity of particular tactics and its unique shopper base.A top partner, Albertsons accepted a program spanning all banners (excluding United) and offering the T-shirt with $20 purchases of Johnsonville dinner sausage that were tracked via the grocer’s Just for U loyalty program. Johnsonville received weekly data readouts with a list of shoppers and their email, dollar purchase amount and number of shirts earned.“In some cases, we got as many as nine shirts [for one shopper] – that’s $180 of sausage,” Johnsonville integrated marketing manager Marc Bennett told P2PI. In total, some 12,000 Albertsons shoppers qualified for the incentive.Mobile banner ads, a branded landing page within chain websites and influencer support (via Quotient) plugged the incentive. Albertsons even took on the task of producing a supporting standee placed across all its 2,000-plus stores. The resulting sign was about five-feet tall and resembled a grill.“The reason we liked this lane, outside of just the design of the sign obviously, was these get shipped direct to store. If corporate is in agreement with us on it and they work with [P-O-P partner] Ivie on it, it’ll get shipped to each individual store which is a lot more of a comfort to us than some of the third parties or even within our broker network – it’s never a guarantee we’re going to get stuff up so this is a much better way to do it,” Bennett said.Kroger also accepted a company-wide program, offering the free T-shirt with purchase of five units of dinner sausage. Catalina integration made redemption easy, with qualifying purchases triggering a code printed on receipts that participants submitted to promotional website sausageswag.com.A prominent ad running in the grocer’s June/July issue of My Magazine supported. Johnsonville also participated in Kroger’s summer integrated program and ran digital advertising on kroger.com in partnership with Bimbo Bakeries.Without the availability of Catalina integration or a loyalty program to facilitate easy redemption, Walmart was not one of the retailers offering the T-shirts. Instead, Johnsonville focused on driving online grocery sales seeking to create a “one stop shop” grilling destination in partnership with Bimbo and MillerCoors’ Miller Lite.Integrating across three different product categories required getting Walmart’s beer buyer, bun buyer and meat buyer into the same meeting — not an easy feat. A stroke of luck had the bun and meat buyers chatting while waiting at the same microwave and that’s when a meeting finally materialized.“All three buyers knew bits and pieces of what we were trying to do but no one had seen every bell and whistle presented by each of the parties,” Johnsonville shopper & customer marketing manager Fiona Redhair told P2PI. “Thank God for the microwave.”The team tapped San Francisco-based Aki Technologies to run pre-shop “backyard BBQ made easy” digital advertising with direct-to-cart integration, allowing shoppers to seamlessly drop products from all three partners into their Walmart shopping cart. “This is something we’re testing and excited about because Walmart is definitely pushing and encouraging [online grocery pickup marketing],” Redhair told the Path to Purchase Institute.Knowing that retailtainment is also important to the mass merchant, Johnsonville additionally sent its Big Taste Grill semi-truck on a 10-store Walmart tour across North Texas and Arkansas, with the money raised from food sales going to local charities.In stores, a ShopKick incentive spurred interaction with all the partner products. Miller Lite and Bimbo also created P-O-P kits that were sent out to all Walmart locations, though the suggested cross-merchandising display only materialized in some stores.“You think you’re going to get some enterprise-wide display but the longer I work at Walmart the more I realize there’s no such thing as a force-out; it truly is discretionary if point-of-sale is going to be used,” Redhair said.MillerCoors was also a partner for Johnsonville’s activation at Meijer, with the retailer committing at least half a bunker in the meat department to Johnsonville for seven weeks in addition to incremental display for Miller Lite or Coors Lite. A header above the bunker and similar signage on Miller’s adjacent pallet display incorporated the beer and depicted a group of people getting together, while signage in the beer department directed shoppers to the brats.Seven weeks of display is unusual at Meijer, but the partners made a strong case and strategically only asked for half the bunker to leave room for items the retailer regularly promotes with deals such as its “10 for $10” sale. Through prior Bratsgiving campaigns Johnsonville had learned that half a bunker only decreased sales volume by some 10% but provided a huge cost savings.“The point is, we learned over the years where the diminishing point of return is and what they’re open to,” Plehn said.Additional support included the T-shirt incentive (with purchase of five SKUs), an mPerks offer, a home page takeover, brand pages, recipe integration with video and social media activity.Johnsonville underscored the campaign’s patriotic theme with Ahold Delhaize’s Giant by sending its Big Taste Grill to participate in the annual barbecue battle the chain sponsors in Washington D.C. to raise money for the United Service Organizations. The T-shirt incentive and large shelf signage supported in stores.“This was more of a smaller scale program but it did intertwine with our national tactics,” Redhair said.Sister-chain Food Lion also accepted the T-shirt incentive, supported by display ads.Johnsonville again brought in Bimbo to jointly buy space within Publix’s “Greatness in Grilling”-themed summer grocery mailer, leveraging the partnership to secure secondary merchandising in stores.“Since they are DSD they are able to get POS in the stores, which we are not able to get,” Redhair said.The Big Taste Grill also did a mini-tour of five H-E-B stores and the corporate headquarters, raising money for the March of Dimes through the food sales.“We had secured quite a bit of incremental distribution on a lot of different items so we wanted to support H-E-B as a thank you for bringing in all the new items,” Plehn said. The activity also included a military spouse appreciation day at a local military base staged right before Mother’s Day.Relatively new partner Target had been pushing their digital media capabilities toward Johnsonville, so the manufacturer ran a few experiments tied to summer grilling. The effort included a solo program starring dinner sausage as well as a co-branded initiative the retailer had presented to all of its relevant vendors that partnered Johnsonville with complementary brands within the space.“This was targeting against our likely shoppers at Target and then there was some [digital] display activity that occurred in exchange for our investment within [Roundel],” Bennett said. “We are promised attribution via IRI to see what the sales lifts are and get a more solid ROI on the activity.”Cub Foods, Wisconsin regional grocer Sendik's and c-stores including Circle K also participated.

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