• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, December 10, 2024

Post-election bitterness is seeping into America’s holiday meals, and Johnsonville, the No. 1 sausage company in the U.S., doesn’t like it. Even though 91% of the consumers in the company’s research believe political debate should be an uninvited holiday guest, people sometimes need help steering conversations away from red or blue landmines.

“Help! I’m Hanging Out with Family” includes 52 cards, with non-political conversation starters like “You can be a superhero for a day. Who’s it going to be? Why?” or “What’s a song you are embarrassed to love?”

The card game is limited to 250 packs, which the Wisconsin-based company is providing to people who enter the giveaway through the brand’s Instagram account. Each deck includes a sausage coupon, valued at $20.

The gimmick is part of the “Keep It Juicy” campaign Johnsonville introduced earlier this year, aiming to tone down election-themed animosity. And with Johnsonville’s National Temperature, conducted by The Harris Poll earlier this year, it found negativity kept building, especially in swing states like Wisconsin.

The card game was a holiday afterthought. “We didn’t actually come up with this idea until after the election, when it felt like the time between November 5^th and our annual holidays gatherings was a little too quick for comfort,” says Jamie Schmelzer, Johnsonville’s senior director of marketing, in an email to Marketing Daily. “We created this game in case keeping those get-togethers fun calls for more than sausage.”   

The team brainstormed and test-drove hundreds of questions.

“We would bet no sausage company has ever created a card game faster,” Schmelzer says. And while he doesn’t have a favorite, “we have been surprised by just how long, hilariously and inconclusively some groups have debated whether cereal is soup.”