• by Larissa Faw , April 23, 2021

When 30+ year old brand Oklahoma Joe’s expanded beyond its traditional offset BBQ smokers with its first-ever wood pellet smoker, it sought a way to connect with an audience whose interest in “the craft” extended beyond just BBQ.

This represents a new direction for the brand which typically has engaged in less expensive and high-profile content across social media.

The launch of the Rider Series pellet grills was one of its biggest most recent product launches, so company leaders “knew they needed to go beyond their traditional forms of advertising in order to reflect the significance of that,” explains a spokesperson with agency partner The Variable.

The brand’s traditional backyard smokers take a lot of work, managing fire, charcoal and wood to get the right cooking set up. A pellet smoker, on the other hand, is a motorized smoker that feeds wood pellets into a firepit to create that same effect. There are people who are die-hard offset smokers who frown upon using motorized pellet grills for their convenience, which is why both sides had to be “incredibly strategic” to create work that everyone, regardless of what kind of preferred smoker.

The resulting “Tailgating” content series is built around research that revealed a shared interest between the worlds of BBQ and bourbon.

The Variable decided to team the brand with award-winning Louisville chef, Edward Lee, well-known for his bourbon-inspired BBQ recipes, to film a content series showcasing unique people behind four distinctly different distilleries: Jim Beam, Buffalo Trace, Maker’s Mark and James E. Pepper.

Each was selected to range from globally recognized brands like Jim Beam, to smaller craft distilleries like James E. Pepper. More importantly, “they had to have a passion for the craft of bourbon, and they needed to have an interesting story to tell.” The four spots all include a Lee-created Bourbon-based recipe.

In order to connect with both existing fans as well as one news, the series appears on its website, supported with organic and paid content. Select influencers will also receive a seeding kit, which included an Oklahoma Joe’s cocktail smoker box, branded whisky stones and other bourbon-inspired swag.

“Much like BBQ, there is an amazing story behind the low-and-slow history of bourbon in America. ‘Trailgating’ from Oklahoma Joe’s—a brand with a deep history of its own—is our way of bringing both of those worlds together,” says  Paige Farrow, senior director of marketing at Char-Broil and Oklahoma Joe’s.