DENVER —Americans from coast to coast are in agreement: a backyard barbecue, poolside party or campfire cookout just isn’t complete without potato salad on the table. According to a 2010 poll on AOLFood.com, potato salad is the number one pick among cold side salads, edging out pasta salad, green salad, coleslaw and three-bean salad with 48 percent of the vote.
This past summer, the United States Potato Board (USPB) made sure healthy potato salads made a splash in the media, ultimately generating more than 25.5 million impressions.
“The goal was to provide healthy potato salad inspiration for media and consumers alike,” said Meredith Myers, USPB Public Relations Manager. “Not only did we see millions of media impressions, we also saw traffic to potatogoodness.com more than double from 2010 to 2011 (Memorial Day to Labor Day); so we know consumers are taking action on the information they are reading.”
To kick off the summer of salads, the USPB partnered with The Daring Kitchen, a group of approximately 1,000 home cooks, both bloggers and non-bloggers, spanning the globe and who compete in monthly cooking challenges.
The USPB-sponsored Healthy Potato Salad challenge was announced in May, and all Daring Cooks participants revealed their healthy potato salad creations in June. The result was more than 100 blog posts featuring healthy potato salad recipes, and including key USPB nutrition messages. The top three winners were: Minted Avocado Potato Salad, Grilled Potato Salad with Green Beans and Indian Potato Samosa Salad.
A month later, USPB secured a syndicated placement of its newly developed Purple Potato Salad with Beets and Arugula recipe with Gatehouse News Service, which resulted in coverage on more than 170 online outlets, including the Patriot Ledger, Waltham News-Tribune, and the Norwich Bulletin.
Then in early August, a feature release with the Grilled Pesto Potato Salad recipe debuted and has since been picked-up by 750 online and print outlets. Print placements include the Philadelphia Sunday Sun and The Salisbury Post (NC), as well as a dozen papers in Florida’s Sun Newspaper Group. Online highlights included Ag Journal, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, ClickonDetroit.com, The Sun-Chronicle, and TheDenverChannel.com.
The timelessness of potato salad publicity was proven as photos and recipes from the summer 2010 potato salad press kit reappeared this summer, including the Quick & Healthy Classic, Greek and Baked Potato Salad recipes, which ran in the Journal-Inquirer (Manchester, CT) with a headline touting “potato salad gets a healthy makeover” (circulation 32,000).
Media RD’s Katherine Brooking and Julie Upton included the Quick & Healthy Potato Salad recipe on their blog Appetite for Health while the Chicago Sun-Times ran the Red, White and Blue potato salad recipe for Independence Day.
During this frenzy of food page coverage, potato salad also received high praise from the editors of Eating Well magazine, who collaborated on an article for Yahoo’s “Shine!”— one of the most popular women’s lifestyle websites. Potatoes outshined pasta salad in the article titled: All-American food faceoff: Which is healthier, potato salad or pasta salad?
Quoting the article: “…potato salad has one advantage over pasta salad—it’s almost all vegetable. Potatoes actually have many redeeming health qualities: they’re a good source of potassium and vitamin C and naturally deliver some fiber (especially when you keep the skin on) and protein.”
By marrying America’s love for potato salad with innovative and healthy twists on traditional favorites, the USPB is happy to call the 2011 summer salad season a success.
David Fairbourn is Manager, Industry Communications & Policy, at the United States Potato Board in Denver. The mission of the USPB is to increase demand for potatoes and potato products through an integrated promotion program, thereby providing US producers with expanding markets for their production. David can be contacted at 303-369-7783 or david.fairbourn@uspotatoes.com. For complete information about the programs, ROI results, resources and tools available to all members of the industry through the USPB, please visit www.uspotatoes.com. The United States Potato Board—Maximizing Return on Grower Investment.
Source: United States Potato Board