The Sausage King Has No Clothes

Hold your breath. I’m about to dish some dirt on a celebrity spokesperson.

Getting ready for work this morning, I saw a new spot in the continuing “How the Sun Starts His Day” campaign for Sara Lee’s Jimmy Dean Sausage.

Once upon a time, in an ad jungle far away, I worked on the brand when Jimmy Dean himself was the spokesperson. And, as someone who worked and lived through the Jimmy Dean reign, I couldn’t be happier about the current campaign’s Jimmy-less course.

At the time, Jimmy, if memory serves, held a contract through Sara Lee that paid him a reported $1,000,000.00 per year for doing little more than appearing in roughly one new commercial each quarter. The contract also provided him with an office and a personal secretary in the headquarters’ office space (next to the CEO’s) in Memphis, Tennessee that he rarely used.

Even then the brand managers were planning on the day when Jimmy would no longer be around to sell sausage for them, and it made perfect sense to do so. Even the nicest of people die, after all, and it’s prudent for a company–especially one so tied-in to a particular personality–to have a plan in place should the unfortunate (but unavoidable) occur.

Enter New England Consulting who began doing whatever it is they did (I still haven’t figured out what value they added to the brand), and enter a new stealth campaign of creating stealth campaigns. Round after round, year after year, our agency was tasked with developing Jimmy-free ad concepts (taken to the board stage) and keeping the whole operation hush-hush.

Jimmy, you see, was still the spokesperson, and Jimmy was a right cunt to deal with on-set or in the studio. Everyone from the brand managers on down walked on eggshells around him and with good cause: being around him was like jogging with a box of sweating, thirty-year-old dynamite. You never knew when it was going to go boom.

Jimmy having a hard time slurring through the scripted words, “tasty, delicious sausage”? It must be the copywriter’s fault. Boom.

Jimmy a little too warm on the set? It must be the producer’s fault. Boom.

In thinking about what I was going to write, I decided to look old Jimmy up to find he’d written a book about his exploits as the Sausage King. You can find it on Amazon and read excerpts from it online (I’d never dream of shelling out cash for it).

Starting somewhere around page 189 he discusses what he saw as being wrong with his commercials at the time. He claims we pushed a trailer, wardrobe and makeup person on him–things he calls “fat”–when they were all his demands. Can you see someone, anyone, who’s been a legitimate recording star and has performed in feature length films showing up on set and NOT wanting a makeup and wardrobe person there, beautifying him up in his own personal, just-off-set trailer? The only artificial filler in Jimmy Dean’s Sausage was his own plentiful ego.

He complains about having cue cards on the set, despite the fact he couldn’t nail the concept in a single roll of film even with the cards, much less stay on-message for fifteen seconds. Others’ genius in the edit suite saved his ass on more than one occasion. Hell, it saved his ass on all occasions.

He also talks about the “fat” of renting a house to be used as a location versus simply building sets like he did in the old days. Never mind the costs associated with renting a location, insurance included, came in at under five grand while building a set would have cost us closer to twenty-five. He wouldn’t know anything about that. He’s just a good ‘ol country boy, after all, whose gut instinct was all the business knowledge he needed.

Eventually the market passed him by. Sure, Sara Lee continued to get letters from Grandmothers who just loved Jimmy and his sausage-selling ways, but he’d completely lost his relevance to anyone under the age of forty.

Then, one day, the agency I was working at imploded and, heavens to Betsy, I no longer had to deal with the man. A few years later, in 2004, Sara Lee brought in a new hotshot C.E.O. and Jimmy was (finally) shown the door.

From all accounts, it was a bitterly contested (but desperately needed) move and, according to another ad monkey associated with the competing Owens Sausage brand, the first thing Jimmy did was approach Owens about becoming a spokesperson for them.

Nice.

So am I happy to smile groggily at the subtle-but-smart wit of the current How the Sun Starts His Day campaign when I catch it in the morning? You bet your ass I am and I hope Chiat/Day and Sara Lee sell a ton of sausage and breakfast products with it. I only wish the change could have happened when I was still working on the brand.

I lived through the cold, darkness of Jimmy Dean the man, and I much prefer the warmth of the sun, even in foam suit form.

Note: Due to a spam flood, commenting has been turned off on this entry.
A Note’s Note: Chiat/Day picked up AOR duties on Sara Lee’s flagship account.

Email Article Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 04:54pm Mack Simpson

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