That is Ryan Post, senior brand manager with Oberto Beef Jerky, explaining the company’s new “Eat Like An Alpha” marketing campaign. The company has rebranded its meat snack for a more masculine audience, pairing the “alpha male” with his “sidekick.” The alpha male calls the shots, the sidekick follows, and Oberto has crafted an entire campaign around a man’s innate desire to belittle his boys.

Oberto brought a conglomeration of different media types together last night at Hill Country, a kick ass BBQ joint in Manhattan, to launch the campaign. The campaign revolves around the alpha male totally owning his sidekick, and you get to pick that sidekick yourself. The website has a section where you can send a fairly insulting humorous card to your buddy, thus alerting him to his sidekick status. They’ve also created a pretty damn sneaky website that I won’t give away here, that let’s you totally emasculate your friend through the magic of a misleading URL. Even if you never eat beef jerky again in your life, you’ll want to take advantage of this feature.

The branding effort extends beyond the web. In addition to dual bar coasters that let you assert your alpha male superiority through beverage placement Oberto has changed its packaging, switching colors to a fire-engine red, reducing the number of fonts on the package and eliminating the fat and protein content from the front of the bag. Men do not care about such things when they pick a snack. The company has also launched a television campaign that really makes it clear just what kind of man buys their jerky, and what kind of man mooches from the bag. Have a look.

To further the branding effort the company has also developed a line of sidekick themed wear, Trusty, which features a t-shirt featuring a shotgun down one arm (the sidekick never drives) and a line of alpha-branded cologne, which smells like hickory (the sidekick wants to smell like a manly jerky eater). If nothing else, we want to add a hickory scent to our arsenal of toiletries. Please be real. It’s all we want for Christmas.

On a side note, if your heading to New York City anytime soon and you want to check out some top-notch BBQ, give Hill Country a shot. As a BBQ connoisseur, I was thoroughly impressed.

Eat Like An Alpha
Hill Country