lindsey montague · acd · art director

To shake up an overly-pragmatic category, we decided the best way to get women excited about dressing was by undressing a hot guy in the kitchen.

Meet The Zesty Guy, the host of a cooking show set in Tuscany. And though he may not really be a culinary expert, he uses his charm to make delicious things happen.

This campaign was written by women, for women, and we only had one thing on our minds: getting women zesty. At every turn, our team — and even our brave clients — set out to make something notorious.
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Getting Zesty on Bravo
To get this sculpted physique the exposure it deserved, we partnered with Bravo, whose particularly vocal fanbase is teeming with our target audience. We wrote three additional contextually-relevant spots in which our Zesty Guy wove Real Housewife inside jokes into his culinary repertoire. These spots aired one night only, throughout primetime programming which included season finales and premieres so lots of women were sure to tune in. The buzz around “the hot guy from the Kraft commercials” built throughout the night, then culminated with The Zesty Guy as the sexy guest bartender on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live. And yes, by the end of the show he had lost his shirt.

Here’s how the New York Times explains it:

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Not a RHONY viewer? Learn about Ramona’s pinot grigio obsession here.
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Not a fan of RHOBH? See Kyle doing the splits here.
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Haven’t seen RHONJ? Watch Teresa flip out here.

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The Digital Dream Team
Our budget was tight, so at launch we deployed a crack team of social media whizzes huddled around TVs and laptops, scouring the social media landscape for any opportunity to engage. In addition to tweeting and posting, we wanted to pepper the conversation with surprisingly personalized content. While I was in New York managing our hunky live TV appearance, the team back in LA would feed me content ideas to gather on the fly. In just a few hours, we made 300 direct engagements to top influencers. So even though we only aired on one cable network for one evening, the resulting response was through the roof. In a matter of hours we had earned almost 300K YouTube views, 40K visits to our site, 5M Facebook views with tens of thousands of likes/shares/comments. Here’s a sampling:
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See more zest on:
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Vine

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Zestygrams
At getmezesty.com users could choose from mad-lib style drop down menus and employ Facebook connect to send personalized “zestygrams” to their friends. We wrote hundreds of possible combinations sure to make people LOL, share, make another one, and LOL again.
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Print
The only thing our hunk of man meat still needed was his very own centerfold series, which hit newstands and tablets right smack dab in the middle of People Magazine’s Most Beautiful People issue, and many more.
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When our creative director took another job midway through selling this campaign, I had the opportunity to step into an ACD role that often included just as much copywriting as art directing. We spent months defining and redefining zestiness, and along the way one of my biggest fears was that we might get compared to Old Spice. But then, the day after we launched, Good Morning America compared us to Old Spice and I realized it actually felt pretty amazing.

Click here to watch the report:

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And finally, this video wraps it all up for you:

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The Bosses: John Norman, Patrick O’Neill, Xanthe Wells
Associate Creative Director: Lindsey Montague
Art Director: Annie Johnston
Copywriter: Clay Summers
Agency Producer: Tim Newfang
Director: Richard Farmer
Art Producer: Kay Gautraud
Associate Digital Producer: Kiley Story
Account Team: Jennifer Nottoli, Shannon Franqui, Pamela Lloyd, Francesca Nunez, Brigette Edler, Alissa Pindea
Strategy: Lorraine Ketch, Romain Naegelen, Whitney Martinez, Tyler Gaul, Sruti Dhulipala
Community & Social Content Managers: Luke Yun, Jessica Zeller, Kirk Diedrich, Becky Galicia
Project Manager: Holly Prine

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