Punchy - What can you do when you want to revive an old character with enormous equity, but his most compelling characteristic now seems politically incorrect or inappropriate?

Situation: Foster Farms is the leading poultry brand in the western US. They attribute part of that leadership to the affinity created by the brand’s muppet style chicken characters, the Foster Imposters®. Created in 1993 to set the brand apart in a commodity oriented, low involvement category, the Foster Imposters are unique in that they embody the antithesis of the brand that created them.

Scruffy, paunchy and unhealthy, the Foster Imposters symbolize competing brands of chicken that can’t measure up to the fresh, natural and locally grown qualities of Foster Farms chickens. Their comically doomed schemes to pass themselves off as Foster Farms birds successfully positioned the brand as the premium choice in the category, facilitating margins and unit growth above category norms.

However, success brought challenges. Despite or even because of their comically unsavory qualities, people liked the harebrained characters. They became celebrities in their own right, drawing large crowds at local appearances and in some ways threatening to overshadow the brand that was both their sponsor and nemesis. Clearly the Foster Imposters had grown beyond tactical advertising characters to become strategic assets of the brand. The Foster Farms team faced the tough issue of how to responsibly “manage” this asset without imposing restrictive rules that could kill the wonderful spontaneity of the characters. Brand leadership also felt the need to articulate the essence of the characters and the campaign so that multiple suppliers could work off a shared set of understandings and the campaign could continue to evolve as people moved on and off the brand.


Symptoms:

  • Frequent turnover of creative teams at the agency was placing more pressure on the client to “institutionalize” knowledge of the characters and their story without inhibiting creativity.

  • The campaign was great at building the base brand, but was proving less effective at advertising line extensions. Foster Farms’ business plan called for an increasing number of line extensions in the coming years.

  • Foster Farms was also having difficulty using these antiheroes in visual mediums like billboards and point of sale.

Solution: Character analyzed the campaign and articulated the principles that allowed the Foster Imposters to work so effectively. We devoted particular focus to the role of the brand in the campaign and how its relationship to consumers is portrayed in the various spots, as well as the status relationships at play behind the humor. Character Camp demonstrated these principles through improvisational exercises and focused on developing a shared language around the ideas. This enabled the client and agency teams to reach a deeper level of conversation about where to go with the characters and how to gauge progress along the way. The ensuing Character Sourcebook provided a detailed “bible” that articulated who the Foster Imposters are as characters and the principles that drive their story.

In a subsequent project we worked with brand leadership to apply the principles behind the Foster Imposters to the brand itself. This resulted in a means for evaluating proposed line extensions and a plan for how the brand could pursue growth that was “In-character” with its own heritage and values.

Copyright 2002 Character, LLC.