• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, May 4, 2012

Kraft Foods is venturing into new digital territory as part of the multimedia launch campaign for its “no artificial preservatives” Oscar Mayer Selects line.

Themed “It’s Yes Food,” the campaign -- one of the largest in Oscar Mayer’s history -- kicked off with three humorous TV spots showing a mother having to say “no” to all kinds of things (including her husband’s ill-fitting skinny jeans and her son’s plea to adopt a reptile as a pet), but happy to say “yes” to Selects cold cuts, hot dogs and bacon.

The hub of the campaign’s digital efforts, from 360i, is an Oscar Mayer “Yes Quest” on the Kraft promotions site. 

The offer: Provide your email, share a Selects message with 10 friends and get all of them to click into the link in the message within one hour, and receive a coupon for a free package of a Selects product. Recipients who click into the message then have their own opportunity to try for the free product coupon by passing it along to 10 more friends. (Yes, Quest site visitors who prefer not to send the emails can elect instead to print out a $1 coupon for a Select product.)

The Yes Quest promotion marks the first time that a Kraft brand has used a limited-time offer as part of a “progressive-style” digital campaign, Tom Bick, director, marketing communications and advertising at Oscar Mayer, tells Marketing Daily.

“We know that digital promotions are more successful when we can spark people to share it across their social media channels,” Bick notes. “The Yes Quest uses a one-hour time limit to encourage consumers to immediately share the free product opportunity with their friends and generate excitement” for the new Selects line.

Indeed, social media referrals through the emails, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ generated 80% of the traffic in the first 48 hours following the Yes Quest site’s launch. (The brand is promoting the site’s link through its @OscarMayer Twitter account, and “continuing to explore” other social media to spread the Selects message, says Bick.)

In addition, online banner ads linking to the Selects Yes Quest -- the first digital ads to feature multiple Oscar Mayer products -– are being featured in women’s lifestyle, home and food-focused sites. 

And in another play on the yes/no theme, the brand has partnered with Pandora to take over the Internet radio platform’s home page when listeners click the “thumbs down” or “skip” features as they are listening to music.

In the traditional media arena, the three TV spots (all of which debuted on the May 2 episode of ABC’s “Modern Family”) will run through September 2012, and four print ads will run in food, entertainment and lifestyle magazines through October.

Oscar Mayer Selects, launched in 2010 with hot dogs, has expanded to include multiple hot dog varieties (including New York and Chicago styles, Angus and Angus bun-length), as well as five cold-cut varieties and smoked, uncured bacon.

Developed to appeal to the growing number of consumers looking to avoid artificial ingredients and processed foods, Selects is the latest among numerous Oscar Mayer brand extensions launched in recent years, including Adult Lunch Combos and its Deli Fresh and Carving Board cold-cuts lines.

In announcing the Selects ad campaign, Oscar Mayer said its new-product launches and marketing efforts during the past five years have helped differentiate the brand. (Consumers now perceive it to be “more relevant, authentic, distinctive and straightforward,” according to the Landor Brand Health Update BrandAsset Valuator.) The non-digital campaign creative is from Mcgarrybowen, Chicago.