Salad Dressing Just Got Steamy

Salad dressing just got steamy, sexy and sensual. Last week, Kraft introduced their new “Let’s Get Zesty” ad campaign for it’s Italian dressing. It features a hot guy cooking over an outdoor grill and it’s full of sexual innuendos, take a look:

http://youtu.be/97Q56WXTsp4

This commercial, with several targeted spots on Bravo, has a similar look and feel to past Effie award winner – “Old Spice” which used sex to entice women to buy it’s body wash for the men in their life, but “Mr. Old Spice” didn’t have quite have as many sexual undertones in his commercial as “Mr. Zesty.” And, sex sells.

Kraft takes the integrated marketing campaign a step further with its “GetMeZesty.com” landing page where you can personalize a “Zestygram” and share it with friends and family.

And if that wasn’t enough to engage consumers, you should check out Mr. Zesty’s Facebook page and Tweets to his fans– complete with brief (Vine) video messages to his followers.

Vine was released by Twitter in January to engage consumers in conversation, create brand awareness, introduce new products, etc., and of course, it comes with analytics. It allows you to measure what “Vines” are being shared or re-tweeted compared to other media such as YouTube and Instagram. So, Kraft can measure Mr. Zesty’s appeal and if his sexiness is selling the product.

By judging tweets from over a thousand fans so far, Kraft should be pleased with the positive responses from their steamy new ad campaign. For instance, T. Monet tweeted “My mom and I both purchased Zesty Italian dressing after watching TheZestyGuy’s commercial and Kristen K. said “Definitely need to buy some Kraft dressing after seeing @TheZestyGuy’s abs… ummm, ads…”

It will be interesting to see how this campaign unfolds. If Kraft’s brand image and awareness will increase by successfully mimicking the “Old Spice” concept, or just see a temporary spike in sales. Either way, Mr. Zesty (aka Anderson Davis) is definitely entertaining eye candy and might just become the next “Fabio.” Afterall, he’s already getting marriage proposals from women online which even caught Good Morning America’s attention. So, what you think? In the world of advertising — Fad or Fab?

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