No hidden vegies or voting advice in Masterfoods’ Democracy Sauce
Masterfoods Australia has hit on a widely used and accepted cultural reference – ‘the democracy sausage’ – in a campaign to promote its brand through a slathering of Democracy Sauce.
Around 4000 bottles of Democracy Sauce-labelled tomato sauce will be sent out across the country to sausage sizzles staged outside polling stations for the 3 May election.
The idea had been presented to MasterFoods Australia by a number of agencies over the years, but it was only in the last 12 months that they got serious about the idea internally.
Brands and marketers like to keep some distance from politics, but as MasterFoods Australia’s communications lead Annabel Archer told Mumbrella, the democracy sausage is non-partisan.
“The beauty of the democracy sausage is there isn’t much that is political about the democracy sausage. It is an Australian icon – a cultural tradition that we thought was really fitting for Masterfoods to tap into. Masterfoods does have the number one Australian tomato sauce, so we thought it was a great way to be able to leverage the cultural moment without having to get into the politics of the election,” she said.
In addition to supplying the 4000 bottles to polling stations, the campaign will also see bottles sent out to influencers and via media partnerships.
Because the MasterFoods Democracy Sauce campaign is being staged outside Australian Electoral Commission booths, it was important to make sure that no laws were being broken.
“We checked that we were compliant with advertising policies with the AEC, marketing to children, and everything else we needed to check,” Archer said.
An AEC spokesperson has confirmed that a campaign like this is fine: “As long as the sauce bottles don’t have any communication encouraging people which way to cast their vote, then this wouldn’t be a matter for the AEC. The sausage sizzles at polling places are community-run events by organisations like local footy clubs, Lions clubs etc. If they’re happy to receive free sauce, that is used outside of the AEC venues, then that’s their business.”
Also, rest assured that if you are in queue for a democracy sausage, the Democracy Sauce is, in fact, “the good stuff.
Archer confirmed that “It isn’t the hidden vegetables sauce that we have relabelled Democracy Sauce. It’s the regular tomato sauce.”
Another win for democracy!
