Marketing Super Heroes and Sausage

There has been some debate in various blogging circles about the approach marketers and advertisers take in working with bloggers. Many bloggers, some more than others, write/complain/mock on a regular basis about how they can't stand when and how marketers will write them asking them to pitch certain products. As much as I understand the frustration of spam and spam like pitches I for one actually welcome the opportunity. Blogging is not my job. I consider it a hobby. A hobby with benefits (hey now). See the ads from BlogHer on the right. I make a little bit of money from those ads.

I get emails from marketers all the time asking me review a product or write about some service or what have you that doesn't really fit the scope and feel of this blog. I don't get mad or annoyed. I thank the sender of the pitch with quick email telling them I am not interested but if another opportunity comes along to works well with the content of my blog then please keep me in mind. I have probably only said "yes" to maybe 10% of the marketing pitches I have received. That is not a lot. I say no because, well, I don't think throwing all kinds of product endorsements and what not is fair to the people that read here on a regular basis.

However every now and then an email pitch comes along that is just too good to pass up. It is emailed to me almost as if the person who works for the marketing company reads my blog and knows me personally. This week I got two that were too good to pass up.

I have written in the past about how I dig sausage Here Here Here Here. Hell, my very first post on P&B, my test post if you will, was about Kielbasa. I have often said if I was ever stranded on an Island the one food I would bring would be sausage.

When I received an email form Hillshire Farms asking me to "try" their Beef Smoked Sausage to review, how could I say no? Here is the funny thing, I put the quotes around the word try because we get Hillshire Farm products all the time. I do not need to review it. Hillshire is one of the best out there when it comes to Brats and links. They sent me a free packages of their smoked sausage and one of their Kielbasa, a cook book with some pretty impressive looking recipes and an apron that says "Go meat." The best part was that it was delivered on Lauren's birthday, so, that's right, she got sausage for her birthday present (hey now). We tried this recipe and even though I do not like spinach I do like sausage and cheese. The meal was very good and the leftovers made a great lunch. Also I love that Hillshire Farm's website is Go Meat.

Hillshire Farms wants to offer one of P&B readers a chance to win a free Sausage a month for a year. The winner will receive 12 coupons, each for one free product. A years worth of sausage. To enter leave me a comment telling me what one food you would want to have if you were stranded on an island (Dharma Initiative foods are not an answer). I will pick one winner at random.

But wait, there is more (I sound like Ron Popeil).

The other day I received an email from a woman with Hachette Book Group offering me a chance to give away some Iron Man Books (Junior Novel and easy reader books) for kids. Seriously, these marketing people must stalk me or something. They must know that my son Wyatt dresses up as Iron Man every day. They have to know that I am a recovering comic book addict , that our house is filled with super heroes and that I compare blogging to comic books.


Anyway the seven books (listed here) are all based around the new Iron Man 2 Movie coming out this May. I was introduced to Iron Man in either the late 70s or early 80's in the comic book the Avengers. I still remember my first issue of the Avengers. If you would like a chance to win the Iron Man Super Hero Super Giveaway book collection (I have three I can give away so that is three winners) please leave me comment trying to guess what was the issue number of my first Avengers comic (comic books have issue numbers starting with #1 and each month is a new issue). The three guesses that are closest to the actual issue number will win the 7 Iron Man books. Once a number is guessed it cannot be used again so be aware of the guesses in the comments.






You can leave a comment for a chance to try and win both the sausage and the Iron Man books but you need to tell me your Island Food and the issue number. Winners must live in the Continental US (or Canada for the Books Only). Winner must make it easy for me to contact you (like have a valid blogger account or email address or just, you know, make it easy). Also The publisher cannot send the books to a p.o. box. I will stop taking entries on Sunday 3-21-10 at 11PM.--

Meal Planning

My wife Lauren kind of made a new years resolution to be more organized, which, by some strange rules of marriage, means that I too , somehow, made the same resolution, which by some strange rule means I now have to clean up after myself and put things away "where they belong, not where you think they go."


One of the ways I wanted to try and reign in the chaos was to become more organized with how we do our food shopping. Planning meals and making accurate shopping lists, not only would our day to day lives easier but we could also save money by budgeting and only making one trip to the grocery store.


When we lived in Florida I made an Excel spreadsheet based on the contents of each aisle of the Publix super market where we shopped. It took some time to do but it was worth it. When I made our shopping list I sorted the items on the list by aisle number, shopping was never so easy. I never had to back track in the store because I forgot to get peanut butter and pass the snack aisle again and accidentally put 2 barrels of cheese balls into the cart. I shopped efficiently which saved time and money. Since moving back to PA I have yet to make a list like that.


A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Edelman who were doing some work with Kraft Foods. They wanted to know if I would interested in reviewing Kraft's new APP for the BlackBerry, Kraft Food iFood Assistant. Their website said the APP had a built in shopping list function which I thought would be perfect for me. Downloading the APP to my BlackBerry was free and Kraft offered to send me an AMEX gift card to "try the APP". Here is a disclaimer: I have been compensated by Kraft Foods to cover the cost of groceries to try out recipes and features on their iFood Assistant Lite 2.0 and to conduct a reader giveaway. My opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to post positive sentiments Kraft Foods or their mobile device offerings.


After receiving the AMEX gift card Lauren and I decided to try Kraft's 1 Bag 5 Dinners feature on their website. I clicked on the various menu buttons, adding the ingredients to my shopping list which would be accessible from my BlackBerry. I also printed the list and recipes from their website as backup. Lauren and I thought the whole experiment in planning our weekly meals would be fun and how cool that our first try would be on Kraft's dime. Lauren and I also put together our regular food shopping list for the week and we headed to the Giant Food Super Store.


Once in the store I tried to open the iFood application on my BlackBerry. It would not open. There was no decent signal. I then remembered that I can never get a decent signal in any large box store, ever. I kept trying and trying to load the APP but it would not work. I tried by the deli, nothing. I tried in the bakery, nothing. I tried in dairy, meat and seasonal sections and still nothing. It was very frustrating. It was good thing that I printed the list. We filled our cart with the Kraft ingredients as well as other items we would need and proceeded to the check out.

The check out clerk gave us our total. I swiped the AMEX gift card to compensate for the Kraft purchases. The card did not work. I swiped it again, nothing. There was that awkward moment where the clerk kind of rolled her eyes and looked at me like I was an idiot that did not know how to swipe a card. I told her it was a an AMEX gift card so maybe that was the problem. Which she then confirmed that it was a problem. Giant Food Stores does not accept American Express. I did the whole credit card shuffle in my wallet and presented my bank card to pay for our food.

Our fun experiment was becoming annoying.

Sorry, this post just became a Dennis Story (a Dennis Story is any story that goes on too long named after my brother Dennis who does not know how to tell a short story).

Anyway, the actual recipes that we tried for the week, the whole 1 bag 5 meals, were all really really good. Each recipe for the week included using Kraft Lite Zesty Italian Dressing which really added a great flavor to each meal. One of the meals we used the dressing, instead of oil or butter, to saute onions, which I thought was a great idea. The APP itself is a great way to get recipes although I prefer just using their website. The practicality of the APP, being on a mobile device is not really, well, practical in my opinion. The shopping list feature, which to me is the one thing you would need the mobility of the APP for, could use major improvements. I do plan to use the Kraft website more often in the future for their recipes as well as their meal planning tips. They have a section Prep-and-Freeze which looks cool and useful.

As part of the deal for me trying their iFood Assistant, Kraft gave me two $50. gift card to give away to readers. So for a chance to win a $50 gift card we are going to play Price is Right. In the comments the two people who guess the total dollar amount Lauren and I spent at the Giant on our shopping trip (closest to the amount without going over) will receive one of the gift cards. Only one guess per person and I will not accept duplicate amounts so please read other peoples guesses. LEAVE COMMENTS ON THE MAIN POOP AND BOOGIES PAGE. NOT HERE ON THE REVIEW SITE. Gift Cards are only valid in the US and maybe Canada. As a hint we spent over 40 but under 100 bucks. Remember the total is not just the Kraft items but our whole shopping trip. I will stop take guesses on Sunday 1/24/2010 at midnight. If you do not have a Blogger account (or a way for me to contact you) leave a comment but also email me at batmeaks at verizon dot net.

I will contact the winners on Monday.

Birkenstock Review

Birkenstock contacted me about 5 weeks ago asking me if I would be interested in reviewing one of their shoes. I sent them a reply email telling them "I appreciate the offer, however I do not think I could give them an honest review due to the fact that I do not wear the type of shoes they make." I said they would be better off requesting a review from someone else.

Eight days after I sent that email, my wife Lauren, told me she wanted a pair of "kick around the house type of shoes" for Christmas. I laughed.

The next day I emailed the people at Birkenstock and told them about my conversation with my wife. They said they would send me a pair of women's Bostons for her to try.

They arrived in the mail a few days later. Lauren has not taken them off her feet since.

I recently asked her what she thought of the new shoes and she responded by saying that they are a very comfortable shoe and they were so easy to wear. She also said that they stand up to dog shit (she stepped in dog poop in our back yard two days after getting the shoes and she hosed off the shoes and they are perfectly fine). She said she would have no problem kicking me in the head while wearing them (she was referring to my request to try and kick me because I thought I was the next karate kid).

Lauren loves her new Birkenstock shoes. Since I got them before Christmas I still need to go out and buy her a gift to open for Christmas. I think she may like a year's supply of Doritos (I want one), or maybe a gift certificate to Dunkin Donuts.

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