Kiolbassa

Services Offered:

Trade and Retail Media Engagement
Product Reviews
Thought Leadership
Food Publication Engagements
Digital and Traditional PR

Impact Achieved

16,876,502,374 total media impressions
46 live media opportunities including Men’s Journal, The Atlanta Journal Constitute, Yahoo! News, Before It’s News, Digital Journal, and Austin Chronicle among many others

Sent out a total of 16 product samples to relevant media members including Food Network, Austin Food Magazine, Esquire, Bloomberg Pursuits, Business Insider, UPROXX and many others.

Kiolbassa Smoked Meats is a Texas-based company that has been making some of the best-tasting sausages and bacon since 1949. Owned by the Kiolbassa family, the brand is well known for its devotion to the time-honored tradition of hand-crafting their products the slow, authentic way, using only the finest cuts of meats and the freshest spices. When they got in touch with Publicity For Good, they wanted more visibility to help support the brand’s growth whilst also creating awareness about Links of Love, the brand’s commitment to feeding those in need by donating 10,000 pounds of sausages per month to fight food insecurity and respond to disasters.

After doing an audit of the brand’s media and social footprint, we at PFG developed a plan that focuses on four things: securing interviews for Kiolbassa’s CEO, Michael Kiolbassa, a multi-awarded entrepreneur who really took Kiolbassa from being a family business to a successful meat empire; hijack trending topics or seasonally relevant stories to expose the brand and its signature line-up of products to more people; create positive product reviews, and; use the Links of Love donation drives as a means to generate more positive publicity. In addition to national news networks, other target outlets include regional networks, food blogs, and trade and retail media.

We aligned our approach to PR outreach with Kiolbassa’s marketing initiatives and drove awareness to the brand’s retailers through geotargeting our efforts by focusing outreach in cities and morning shows where Kiolbassa’s CEO can promote the brand and its retailers.

The four-pronged approach to delivering the results Kiolbassa wanted to see worked well for the brand. In a span of eleven months, we were able to secure 41 media opportunities for them. Michael did so well during his interviews that it became increasingly easy to pitch him to other networks. Regular stories about the brand and its Links of Love activities came in, and positive reviews flooded relevant websites and social media channels. All in all, our efforts were able to generate a total of 16,876,502,374 impressions. Key coverages include Men’s Journal, Before It’s News, Digital Journal, Newswire, the Atlanta Journal Constitute, Austin Chronicle, Focus Atlanta TV, FOX 29 News Philadelphia, Great Day SA, Kens-TV, WAGA-TV, MSN, Austin-American Statesman, Gear Culture, Yahoo! News, The National Provisioner, Perishable News and Food Engineering.

We were also able to send out a total of 16 product samples to various media members including Austin Food Magazine, Esquire, Bloomberg Pursuits, jacksonville Journal-Courier, Business Insider, Cowboys & Indians, The Root, Food Network, The U.S. Sun, UPROXX, Good Side News, the Miami Herald, Bayne, Bijan, Paramount Journal, Publicity For Good and Better Homes and Gardens.

Slowly but surely, the Kiolbassa name became synonymous to deliciously hand-made sausages and bacon, charity, and business success. All our efforts support their aggressive expansion and helped drive people to stores where they are present as well as to their e-commerce site.

Kiolbassa Smoked Meats has been in the business of making some of the finest sausages and bacon since 1949. They continue to preserve the art and tradition of slowly handcrafting their charcuterie from superior cuts of meat and the freshest spices to produce a magnificent culinary experience. Apart from serving delicious links, they serve up Links of Love, which is Kiolbassa’s way to give back to the community by donating 10,000 pounds of product per month to battle food scarcity, especially during disasters. Through Publicity For Good, Kiolbassa was able to acquire 41 media opportunities for local and national media outlets, generating a reach of over 16 billion media impressions. With this much exposure, Kiolbassa’s fine work with sausages and inspiring work for the community has given the Kiolbassa brand the recognition it deserves as a purpose-driven brand.

Read more about our work with Kiolbassa here

MEDIA QUOTES

“The West Texas Food Bank is excited to have a donation of much needed protein from the Kiolbassa Smoked Meats Company. The donation will be 5,000 pounds of the Links of Love special sausage, which is an all-pork dinner sausage that is fully cooked, easy to prepare and most importantly delicious.”

Yahoo! News

“While these plump, juicy little fellows were in keeping with breakfast sausage sizes, their flavor profiles were distinctly more dinnerly. Chubby and more festive in orange-red than their Quaker-gray and brown rivals, these were firm, dense, chewy, and thick. The skin blistered and bubbled on the frying pan like a bratwurst or a frankfurter, breaking from the retreating pattern of the other encased breakfast links. They retained much of their moisture, and were bouncy and firm to the bite with a smoky flavor that was very kielbasa-tasting (surprise, surprise) without straying all the way into that territory. They have a much higher protein level, but also more calories to go along with them. They're also considerably more "artisanal" in appearance and marketing, with no nitrates, nitrites, gluten, or MSG.”

MSN

“Kiolbassa Smoked Meats of San Antonio, Texas, was founded in 1949 by Rufus and Juanita Kiolbassa, who produced sausages smoked in small batches over a hardwood fire. The business remains family-owned, but the product line has expanded to include breakfast links in two flavors, dry-cured bacon in two flavors, Mexican-style chorizo and smoked beef, Polish and jalapeno sausages. We are big fans using sausage to add flavor to a meal, and smoked sausage holds a special appeal for the big meat lover in our household. We grilled the two varieties we found at the grocery store, beef and Polish, then added the beef sausage to zucchini noodles and added the Polish sausage to a pasta salad, following recipes we found on the Kiolbassa website. Both were delicious, flavorful meals.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution