Driving sales higher by connecting football and peanut oil 

THE CHALLENGE

Ventura Foods’ LouAna Peanut Oil struggled. It needed energy and excitement to boost sales at Walmart and other grocery stores. The company asked Brian Pia to turn it around.

THE WORK

Historically, the biggest sales season for peanut oil is during the three weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. That’s when many Southerners make a deep-fried turkey. But Brian came up with a better way. He linked turkey frying to college and NFL football. The message: You can cook and eat a fried turkey while watching the big game on TV. That increased the sales season to 20 weeks. It also moved turkey-frying to college and NFL cities beyond the South.

Brian’s team took Cajun chef and football superfan Pat Mould to dozens of cities with a strong college or NFL fan base. We generated feature stories in local media in each city—especially TV talk shows—before the big game. And to continue to push an alternative to traditional Thanksgiving turkey outside the South, we convinced producers of Fox & Friends and NBC’s Today to feature Mould showing viewers how to fry a turkey.

THE RESULTS

We generated thousands of news stories about cooking with LouAna Peanut Oil. The program tripled the sales season, widened the geographic footprint, and created a significant sales increase.