The Fremont Company
Making Sauerkraut Sexy: How to look beyond your navel for extraordinary PR
Highlights of a new case study presentation on the award winning Making Sauerkraut Sexy campaign that increased catagory sales 30% in 12 months. VIDEO HERE
K’Tini’s on the house!
BIGfrontier founder Steve Lundin decided to reposition sauerkraut as a “glamour” product. He crafted a new drink dubbed the “K’Tini” – a martini with sauerkraut stuffed olives – and shipped K’Tini party kits to nightclubs owners, suggesting they throw K’Tini parties. They did, and the buzz grew so big that the K’Tini concept got exposure on ABC’s Good Morning America. Will sauerkraut become the next Red Bull? Was Lundin’s strategy sheer genius, or sheer insanity. It’s too soon to tell, but you’ve gotta admire his flair. ENTREPRENEUR.COM
BIGfrontier knew that the entire category of sauerkraut needed a reinvention and we determined to make one of the nation’s classic comfort foods sexy. This would require an idea to utilize the product in a manner that was a complete 360 from its entire history. We developed the K’Tini: a martini made with vermouth infused, sauerkraut stuffed olives.
The K’Tini was based on the same philosophy that made blue cheese stuffed olives so popular and a favorite amongst the targeted demographic. Because sauerkraut is on the same flavor spectrum as blue cheese, the cocktail tastes fantastic and promised to be an immediate hit with anyone who liked dirty or stuffed olive martinis. This move would instantly align sauerkraut with everything that the martini represents: the quintessential drink of stars, spies and sophisticates.
The program began with an audacious media blitz announcing that the Fremont Company had taken it upon themselves to make sauerkraut sexy, spearheaded with the launch of the K’Tini. We knew that word of mouth buzz generated by the proper associations were as critical as the media work so we began a series of K’Tini parties at upscale clubs around the country. The media ran with the story and within 30 days of the launch a K’Tini was made live on Good Morning America and long feature stories with provocative graphics were written and circulated by the Associated Press and Knight Ridder news services, guaranteeing placements from coast to coast. The story was picked up by virtually every major broadcast outlet and appeared for a 30 day period on regional television news and radio programs.
BIGfrontier Communications Group knew that we had to keep the fire fueled to capitalize on the buzz tsunami spreading through our targeted demographic. We didn’t have the budget to conduct K’Tini parties in clubs in all the targeted markets, so we created the “K’Tini in a Box” party kit, that allowed restaurant and club owners to conduct their own parties. The kit featured the product, menu and art for table tops displays and ads. We targeted each regional market with a media campaign announcing that the kit was now available, free of charge, through the sauerkraut.,com website. This coincided with multiple direct mail pieces and personalized letters directed at the top 20 clubs and restaurants in these markets. Within no time the K’Tini began showing up on the martini menus of clubs nationwide. 90 days after the initiation of the campaign the K’Tini was a real cocktail, being ordered in bars and restaurants nationwide.
K’Tini in a Box kit
Results:
In just 90 days the K’Tini grew from a concept to a bona fide hit in the targeted demographic. Beyond a multitude of print and broadcast media hits, two large national food manufacturers are going to begin manufacturing and distributing K’Tini olives. The term K’Tini and the recipe itself have been entered into the Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary, a potential stepping stone to inclusion in the Oxford Universal Dictionary. The sauerkraut.com website is alive with community activity and K’Tini parties are occurring around the country. Most importantly, BIGfrontier Communications Group created new awareness of a dying product within the targeted demographic, men and women 21-35. And we made sauerkraut sexy to boot.
At the close of 2005 The Fremont’s Company’s sales were up 30% for the year.
