- GE French door refrigerator travels 2,000 miles to bring fresh food to a place where fresh can't be found
- Freshpedition sweepstakes will have one winner receiving a new GE French door refrigerator and others taking home $100 gift cards
LOUISVILLE, Ky. --- June 15, 2012 --- (NYSE: GE) --- The new GE French door refrigerators are engineered to push the limits of fresh. To prove it, GE loaded up a refrigerator from the factory in Kentucky in the back of a truck and traveled with an engineer and a celebrity chef more than 2,000 miles to a place where fresh can't be found. The ad campaign, Freshpedition, began June 14 and includes TV, digital, webisodes, and content on Freshpedition.com as well as social media elements such as Pinterest and Facebook.
As GE invests $1 billion in new products by 2014, the company is commercializing the launches with its largest integrated advertising plan and one-year spend in its history -- in a "fresh" way never done before. Freshpedition -- a campaign to launch the new GE French door refrigerators -- is focused on the fastest growing category in refrigeration. According to AHAM, an industry trade group, bottom-freezers account for 25 percent of refrigerator sales, up 11 percent since 2007. The new GE French door refrigerators offer the most advanced ice and water technology on the market today, including industry-first features such as Hands-free Autofill and a hot water dispenser. The refrigerators' TwinChill™ evaporators and temperature-controlled drawer can keep foods fresher longer.
Shot in the style of reality TV, the commercial and webisodes, created by BBDO and directed by celebrated reality TV directors John Feist and Kate Hall, follow a GE French door refrigerator and generator tethered to a pickup truck on a road trip from Louisville (where all of the French Door refrigerators will be assembled) to bring fresh food to wildlife biologist Ron Thompson in the field where he lives primarily on canned food for months on end. Chef Ben Sargent of Hook, Line and Dinner on the Cooking Channel and GE engineer Justin Berger stop at locally owned and operated alligator farms, ranches, farmer stands, and a dairy to pick up the freshest food around the country to prepare a surprise fresh meal (view sample recipes) for the wildlife biologist when they reach Texas.
Freshpedition stops for fresh food include:
- Gagel Truck Farm (Louisville, KY) -- Bibb lettuce
- Fox Hollow (Crestwood, KY) -- Eggs
- AA Farm Creamery (Millbrook, AL) -- Goat cheese
- Todd's Produce (Verbena, AL) -- Peaches and peach ice cream
- Crawfish Crazy (Covington, LA) -- Crawfish
- Wall's Alligator Farm (Springfield, LA) -- Alligator meat
- French Market Crawfish & Seafood (Mandeville, LA) -- Red snapper
- Boggy Creek Farm (Austin, TX) -- Vegetables
- Taylor Longhorn Ranch (Fredericksburg, TX) -- Ground beef
The journey will be curated on www.freshpedition.com starting June 14. The tale will be told through five webisodes and freshpedition.com will also include:
- Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram photos from the road from Chef Ben and Justin
- A timeline and map of the journey
- Recipes from Chef Ben
- Links to French door refrigerator information pages and a 3D product gallery
- Sweepstakes to win a new refrigerator through a Pinterest campaign
Where's Ron Sweepstakes
In addition to the advertising, GE is also launching a sweepstakes called Where's Ron. One lucky winner who guesses where Ron is located will win a GE Profile™ French door refrigerator. GE is giving away a $100 Visa Prepaid gift card to one lucky winner every day from June 15 --- June 24, 2012. Consumers can visit the site daily to guess where Ron is and enter for a chance to win!
SEE OFFICIAL RULES FOR DETAILS
https://www.geappliances.com/facebook/wheres-ron/pop_rules.htm
Read how this exciting campaign was covered in The New York Times.
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GE Appliances is at the forefront of building innovative, energy-efficient appliances that improve people's lives. GE Appliances' products include refrigerators, freezers, cooking products, dishwashers, washers, dryers, air conditioners, water filtration systems and water heaters. General Electric (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter to build a world that works better. For more information on GE Appliances, visit www.ge.com/appliances.
Kim Freeman
GE Consumer & Industrial - Americas
[email protected]
502-452-7819