Back to school is a crazy time of year for families. So this fall, Johnsonville armed parents with a resource for easy sausage dinner ideas. Enter The Sausage Support Center, a direct line to the sausage experts in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin.

This next chapter of the “Made the Johnsonville Way” campaign continued to put the company’s employees at the forefront of its marketing. There were no generic recipes or scripted telephone operators when you called The Sausage Support Center. It was the real people in Sheboygan Falls who actually make the sausage. They gave callers advice on what to make for dinner, as well as talking about whatever else comes up. It was anything from football to fishing.

People were able to call The Sausage Support Center using The Sausage Phone in the meat aisle of participating grocery stores or by dialing 844-9-SAUSAGE with their regular phones.

The Sausage Support center was active from September 28 through September 30, 2016. Consumers could call the hotline using The Sausage Phone in the meat aisle of participating grocery stores or by dialing 844-9-SAUSAGE with their regular phones. The actual call center was live for 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. In off hours, a special phone tree made sure callers weren’t left hanging.

To reach moms on the go, we utilized contextually targeted online video, running ads around recipe content on YouTube as well as Pandora, which our target uses throughout the day. Additionally, we dayparted our advertising with Pandora, limiting it to the time of day that moms were most likely to be headed to the grocery store, to drive top-of-mind awareness for Johnsonville.

The Johnsonville members (employees) also created a sausage-y jingles for the call center, which ran on Pandora and Johnsonville’s social channels.

The Sausage Support Center provided a service to consumers in the vein of our employee-led campaign and drove high-performing engagement online and offline.

-Consumers were engaged in our members’ videos and jingles content, encouraging over 4.4M people who started viewing our content to watch it through the end.

-Viewers were excited by the opportunity to receive recipe tips from members, contributing more than 1,700 direct calls to our call center.

-Marketing enthusiasts continued to be excited by our overarching campaign strategy, contributing over 5.5M impressions via trade stories and blogs.

Ultimately, the Support Center was a great opportunity for consumers to connect with the people who are responsible for making our sausage. The notion of reciprocity embedded within this program allowed us to play a deeper role in potentially driving consideration for our brand overall.