Just when you thought the sun, the moon, a rainbow and a cloud had nothing in common with one another–they end up forming a friendship in the name of Jimmy Dean sausages. Yeah, so much for taking a commercial literally–but it’s rare to see a series of ads with simple elements taking an ancient product to a new high. When was the last time you thought about buying Jimmy Dean sausages or their Breakfast Bowls before those ads featuring the sun cleverly and convincingly telling us and his fellow celestial peers that it’s the best dang thing you’ll ever eat for breakfast? It’s probably been a long time and might be an unusual process when corporate takeovers of a longtime favorite American food corporation end up ruining the product for the most part.
Reports are that Jimmy Dean was thrown out of managing his own creation somewhere around 2004 when Sara Lee bought the company a number of years before. That’s a typical situation when someone else buys your company and you get the seemingly contradictory corporate maneuver of the board voting to oust the CEO. It doesn’t make any sense (well, nothing in corporate methodology makes sense)–and it apparently didn’t make any sense to Jimmy Dean either from what’s been said. His losing the grip on his own company apparently affected his state of mind–even though reports say that he’s learned how to enjoy retirement peacefully now after years of building his sausage company to the top. Undoubtedly he has to be proud of the ad campaign they’re using now. Every single ad has a down-home charm that Jimmy Dean used to bring when he starred in the product’s commercials.
I suppose some might find the commercials annoying in the sense that the guy playing the sun is so darn convincing. There’s such a thing as getting so lost in your character that you could sell anything based on that suspension of disbelief. The actor they’ve hired to play the sun (plus all the other supporting players playing the moon, cloud, rainbow, et al.) are likely going to show up in a hit TV show or in movies before long. They’re just too memorable as character actors not to. The frequent airings of the commercials on all the prominent cable news stations only reinforces these commercials and those recently-created Breakfast Bowls into the public consciousness.
All you have to do is add the element of the sun having a typical family who has to get to work and school early (plus the young daughter being inquisitive about what her father actually does for a living) creates one of the most clever ad campaigns on TV today. That’s easy to say–because I’ve long complained that Madison Avenue has gone down the toilet (no product placement intended) in recent years. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when you’d see enough classic commercials in one month to sell out their respective product in grocery stores nationwide. Of course, a lot of those old brilliant ad execs are likely long-retired now with their healthy pensions. They’re probably sitting in their vacation homes carping over the ridiculous commercials you see today by the younger generation who try to set ad trends.
One of those missing elements is showing true family values in either comedic or heart-tugging ways when selling products. People probably miss that dearly–and these recent Jimmy Dean ads bring it back. And if you go on Jimmydean.com–you’ll also notice that they not only celebrate their own family-friendly ads–but also recently did something else to get the American public into a feel-good mode…
Happy Breakfast Tour…
No, that’s no joke that a company would take something out on the road with that title. Even though it was a limited tour in the west coast and southwest areas of the U.S.–this is something the Jimmy Dean Company intends to make an annual event. During the tour, the company sets up an outdoor tasting tent outside certain venues and brings chefs along to show people how to prepare a, yep, Happy Breakfast using Jimmy Dean breakfast products. But that isn’t the biggest selling point. On this last year’s tour (from September to November of 2007), they brought along the guy who plays Mr. Sun to pose for photographs with visitors.
I didn’t attend the event (despite it coming to Portland, Oregon near the Memorial Coliseum this last November)–but no word if Mr. Sun is the same guy in the commercials. Ad campaigns like this sometimes try to fool people into thinking it’s the same person from TV, though isn’t. If it’s the real guy, I somehow I picture some happy people getting to pose with one of the best ad spokesmen on TV right now. That actor probably feels chagrined feeling so famous as our main source of light and energy to the planet…without anybody knowing his name. He’ll probably have his chance to have his name known someday once he can escape the sun and breakfast persona.
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To top off the glow of the Jimmy Dean Company right now, the Happy Breakfast tour reminds people that they’re highly involved in Second Harvest, which is a charity organization out to help families in need. The Jimmy Dean Company is supposed to donate $1 (up to $50,000) to Second Harvest for every Happy Breakfast a person enjoys on the tour.
Well, you know, as the cloud says: Cereal is cold and wet. So is every other commercial out there lately. Let the sun rays and marketing genius of Jimmy Dean sell you…
