Listen to this article 3 min
The Duke’s Mayo website set a record for visits and product sales on Wednesday. That wasn’t an accident. It coincided with the signature event of the condiment brand’s largest marketing campaign: sponsoring the annual college bowl game in Charlotte and a companion Labor Day weekend regular season game.
Joe Tuza, head of condiments products at Duke’s parent Sauer Brands Inc., told CBJ that the four-year-old sponsorship with the Charlotte Sports Foundation has both driven and aligned with business objectives.
Among those objectives:
•Reaffirming Duke’s regional dominance as a brand founded in Greenville, South Carolina.
•Creating interest among grocers, restaurateurs and football fans unfamiliar with Duke’s Mayo.
•Rewarding employees and top customers with VIP game experiences.
•Hosting 300 employees, customers and prospective clients at the stadium’s private club and other seating areas.
•Helping promote new mayo flavors as well as 25 other Duke’s-branded condiments developed over the past four years, including mustards and barbecue sauces. That expansion emanated from Sauer being bought by Charlotte-based private equity firm Falfurrias Capital Partners in 2019
Duke’s Mayo signed a sponsorship extension to keep its name on the bowl game through at least 2028 in September.
Sponsorships, like food, must be fresh, not stale.
West Virginia beat North Carolina, 30-10, in the annual bowl game at Bank of America Stadium. Attendance at the 74,000-capacity stadium increased by 15% over last year to 42,925.
For the third time in four years as title sponsor, Duke’s Mayo capped the game with a post-game victory bath of mayonnaise on the winning coach. South Carolina coach Shane Beamer received the first mayo dousing in 2021, followed by Maryland coach Mike Locksley last year.
Video of West Virginia coach Neal Brown’s baptism-by-mayo Wednesday night generated close to a million views in less than a day. The twist this year: the sports foundation and Duke’s Mayo staged a mayo dumper “combine” to select two fans to do the honors.
“For us, it’s about how do we make it fresh,” Tuza said. “We still are playing off the fact that we hit poor coach Beamer in the head in the first mayo dump. This year, we did something a little different, where we put six contestants through a combine — it created more content for us.”
The company works with the sports foundation and Charlotte agencies Luquire and Bespoke Sports & Entertainment to develop promotions and advertising tied to the game.
Tuza said each coach brings their personality to the celebration.
On Wednesday, as ESPN’s sideline reporter dipped a couple of fries in the mayonnaise dripping from Brown’s pullover, Brown summed up the experience: “I feel cold. I feel wet. But I feel like a winner.”
Country roads lead to Charlotte.
Tuza said that the bowl performed well despite an unexpected detour from an SEC school participating — the conference lacked enough eligible teams — to the Big 12 and West Virginia.
The circumstances played in the bowl’s favor because much of West Virginia is within six to eight hours’ driving distance.
In addition, Mountaineers fans have long been favorable to traveling to BofA Stadium for games, propelling the Charlotte bowl to sellouts in 2002 and 2008 and a near-sellout for a Labor Day weekend game in 2018.
The past two years, the bowl game was played Dec. 30. The Dec. 27 date this year put Christmas in the middle of bowl week with teams in town for practice and tie-in events. Tuza said he was initially concerned about possible hiccups with Christmas but none arose.
“We’re still gathering information, but it seems like we’re getting pretty good pick-up,” Tuza said, referring to social media interest driven by the game and related promotions.
Pop-Tarts, say hello to mayonnaise.
Duke’s Mayo has only been a bowl sponsor for four years, but its presence has been magnified by oddities such as the coach’s mayo bath and fans occasionally sipping from mayo jars in the stands.
ESPN announcers have made Duke’s Mayo-infused snacks a staple of the game broadcast, further fueling awareness for a brand that still counts the Southeast as its primary territory.
This week brought more opportunities. Tuza told CBJ that West Virginia’s pregame show interviewed him Wednesday, providing a platform for the Duke’s Mayo executive to share the company’s 100-year heritage.
“They said, ‘All right, you’ve got to come on and tell the story because all of West Virginia needs to hear this and, by the way, throw in where they can buy it because we’re getting questions,’” he said.
Tuza said the privately held company is making sales gains, though he declined to disclose specific figures.
The bowl campaigns have been influential. Tuza cited the new Pop-Tarts Bowl, a game that has attracted attention with a faux toaster trophy and an edible mascot.
Often, accounts of those clever promotions have included a nod to the Duke’s Mayo Bowl silly stunts. So, it only made sense that the social media accounts of the Duke’s and Pop-Tarts bowl games intersected this week with an exchange about the potential for mayo-infused ice cream.
Could this be the start of a dessert revolution?
“We’ve talked about it, but only in a laughing way,” Tuza said. “I don’t know if we’ve actually run that consumer testing just yet.”