MESSIN' W/ SASQUATCH

By now you probably have seen the "Messin' with Sasquatch" Commercials for Jack Links Beef Jerky. The StarTribune newspaper based in Mineapolis-ST.Paul, Minnesota, reports on the Ad campaign developed by the Minneapolis advertising agency Carmichael Lynch.

By DAVID PHELPS, Star Tribune
Last update: February 8, 2008 - 9:43 PM
Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune


OK, it's guy humor. Like when you put shaving cream in the hand of someone who's asleep and then you tickle their nose until they involuntarily move their hand to their face and give themselves a messy shaving cream bath. That kind of humor.
And it sells beef jerky?

It does when the butt of the joke is the legendary and previously elusive Sasquatch -- also known as Bigfoot -- and the perpetrators are 20-something males, and sometimes females, walking through the woods eating Jack Link's Beef Jerky.
An entire advertising campaign for the Wisconsin snack manufacturer has been built around the theme "Messin' with Sasquatch," helping Jack Link's Beef Jerky become the bestselling jerky brand in the United States. The ads have become a hit on the Internet with an almost cult-like following of people who post messages to Sasquatch and make homemade Sasquatch videos.

"We call our demographic 'adventurous spirits,'" said Troy Link, president of the Minong, Wis.-based company. "They're 18 to 49. They like American heritage brands like Bud, Coke, Ford. They're high-energy. They're social and confident people. The role of Sasquatch is to make the advertisement memorable."

And Sasquatch is good for business. Jack Link's jerky and meat products account for 40 percent of a meat snack market that is approaching $3 billion in annual sales. In the two years that Sasquatch has been bellowing at tormentors, Jack Link's sales have jumped 47 percent in a snack category that rose 12 percent overall, according to ACNielsen.

The Sasquatch concept is the brainchild of Minneapolis advertising agency Carmichael Lynch. It was designed to highlight Jack Link's signature line, "Feed your wild side."

Jack Link's television buy is about $10 million with commercials on programming that appeals to a younger demographic, including extreme sports, ESPN, the Speed Channel, Comedy Central and the Discovery Channel. Sasquatch has been a presence at Wild hockey games as well.

Then there's the Internet.
"There is a big viral component on YouTube," said John Colasanti, Carmichael Lynch CEO. "There's been 4 million hits on YouTube. You don't pay for that."

Jack Link's Beef Jerky was founded with a family recipe in 1985 by Troy Link's father, Jack, who is CEO of the company. It now has five manufacturing plants -- two in Wisconsin and one each in South Dakota, New Zealand and Brazil.
The snack meat, including meat nuggets as well as jerky, comes in flavors ranging from pepper to teriyaki.

In recent years meat snacks have gained in popularity as low-carbohydrate, high-protein alternatives to chips and other snacks.

"We had a great product but people didn't know who we were," said Troy Link. "The role of the Sasquatch campaign was to increase brand awareness and preference. It was to make us be known as the cool brand."

Jim Bendt, chairman of the Minnesota chapter of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and president of the Gabriel DeGrood Bendt agency in Minneapolis, said the Sasquatch campaign is a good example of how advertisers and retailers are targeting the "echo boomer" generation -- the children of baby boomers.
"That's who marketers are really interested in, and technology plays a huge role in how you reach them," Bendt said. "Technology is second nature to this group and they like to multitask. They're surfing the Web while they're watching TV. Marketers find them very elusive."

The Sasquatch commercials are designed to be mini-tales about life in the wilderness.
One ad shows two hikers who spot Sasquatch cooking a fish over a campfire. One of them sneaks up behind Sasquatch and loosens the cap on the salt shaker. When Sasquatch goes to season his catch, the entire container of salt spills out. A pained "why me?" expression comes across his face.

In another, two guys in a car going down a road in the woods slow down to offer Sasquatch a ride and, each time Sasquatch reaches for the back-door handle, the car speeds up, as the guys in the car crack up in laughter.

Sasquatch, however, usually has the last laugh, or the last thump. In the hitchhiking spot, Sasquatch finally slams the passenger in the car through the windshield and then climbs into his seat. In other spots, pranksters get swatted by Sasquatch's powerful arms or get hit with a sizable rock.
"The campaign has definitely hit its mark," said Troy Link.
David Phelps • 612-673-7269

BFRLC Lunch #3 – the search for Yeren

The BFRLC held its third lunch on Friday, February 8th, at the Vegetarian House at 22 NW 4th Ave, Portland, Oregon 97209. The meeting was another success as we discussed bylaws as well plans for a field day out to the North Plains area.
As for the Vegetarian House – this restaurant can be found in Portland’s Old Town/China Town, a stone’s throw from the Willamette River, the Shanghai Tunnels, and the Greyhound station. The lunch is a buffet with numerous offerings, typical Chinese soups, egg rolls, wantons, fried rice, noodles, sauces – all vegetarian and all very good. The soup was a very pleasant broth filled with potatoes, carrots, cabbage, tofu – a good start of the meal to warm the insides and stimulate the appetite. A standout for the buffet was a soy protein and veggie curry dish that used a thickened yellow curry in a way unexpected for this type of Asian Cuisine. Although the soy protein was a tad chewy, there was something intriguing about the texture that makes this researcher even more provoked to study mastication and what we can discern about evolution – both human and Bigfoot. The water refill rates were a little down from what we with the BFRLC would like to see, but otherwise the staff was attentive and kind.
The most interesting thing about the Vegetarian House is that it seems to be connected in the most subtle of ways to Supreme Master Ching Hai and the Quan Yin Method of Meditation with the Inner Light and Sound. A flat screen television in the back of the restaurant plays a video about Supreme Master Ching Hai and what she can do for you. Supreme Master Ching Hai, Vietnamese by birth, is a humanitarian and practicing Buddhist whose sole function at this point in Her life is to help us with our journey from the suffering and confusion of the unawakened state to the Bliss and Absolute Clarity of Total Divine Realization.
For more information, check out http://www.godsdirectcontact.org/
For information about the Vegetarian House itself, check out http://www.vegetarianhouse.com/
And don't forget to find all of our lunch spots on the BFRLC Map!

YET ANOTHER BF FILM

LAWRENCE TOPPMAN
Movie Critic
Things were pretty much under control while the story involved a former S.C. representative called Bubba, Bigfoot sightings and a yard full of fake dead chickens.
It was drag queen Patti O'Furniture who complicated things a bit. But we're getting ahead of events in the saga of "The Long Way Home: A Bigfoot Story."
Start with the ex-legislator, Columbia attorney James "Bubba" Cromer Jr.
He's gone from an independent in the S.C. House in the 1990s to independent filmmaker, from a part-time job with a decent salary to a full-time obsession where money flows away from you like a freshly undammed river.
And he's a happy, happy man.
"Long Way," shot as a cross between the mad inspiration of John Waters and the low-rent horror fantasies of Ed Wood, has already made back about three-fifths of its $20,000 budget.
Cromer negotiated a deal with distributor UFO TV, which hopes to get the DVD into big-box stores and is making noises about a limited release overseas. And he is beloved in Transylvania County, where he shot his feature around the town of Rosman.
"I've had a creative itch all my life," he says. "So one night you have me and Mom and Dad at our mountain house with Biscuit, my golden retriever, watching a mockumentary about Bigfoot. Coach Cromer would be J. Lewis Cromer, Bubba's dad, who coached the five boyhood friends in Little League 30-odd years ago and is still a prominent trial lawyer in Columbia. The other four are lifelong buddies who wouldn't mind unpaid work in Bubba's movie.
A plot is born
Bubba began with an idea of Bigfoot popping up around the community, eating fowl and scaring people. Four buddies in the N.C. mountains fake up a Bigfoot story, hoping D.J. will come home to cover it and get national media attention. Bubba cast his four buddies and Biscuit as themselves and his dad as the sheriff, Big Jake.
"James Dickey lived across the lake from us when I grew up, and dad wanted to be him after seeing Dickey (play the rural sheriff) in `Deliverance,' " says Bubba. "Dad kept asking me, `When is it time for my soliloquy?' I kept saying, `Dad, it's called a monologue in movies! Shocked? Bubba had already worked with locals Mullet Man, Mona Lisa Johnson and T-Bone Thomas, who swore Bigfoot once urinated on him through an open tent flap. "Nobody in this movie is a stranger," Bubba says. I knew the organic nature of (scenes) would be blown if I gave them dialogue. Only two actors had professional experience: His cousin Helen Mann Marini, who played a snake handler, and Pat Patterson, aka Patti O'Furniture.
"He's a good friend, a Columbia businessman. As part of our Sunday ritual, Biscuit and I visit his Brewster's Ice Cream. I said, `It's about Bigfoot and hillbillies. You're a drag queen. "I ran through cameramen like you'd change your drawers," he says.
(Read Original Article in The Charlotte Observer See www.myspace.com/bigfootsmovie.) Approval from film fests, including the 2007 New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. A positive review from Cult Movies Magazine.