Honey Baked Ham's new holiday campaign does not open in a pristine test kitchen. It opens in a strip mall in Broomall, Pennsylvania, wedged between a Wawa, a dry cleaner, and a nail salon.
The storefront itself "isn’t much to look at." What it has instead is the kind of equity a focus group cannot manufacture: Kylie Kelce actually went there as a kid with her grandmother Mimi to pick up the family's holiday hams and side dishes.
Putting the Broomall strip mall in the commercial was not the result of a creative agency billing six figures to storyboard suburban sentiment. It was Kelce's idea. Honey Baked chief commercial officer Maegan Markee was "happy to go along with it."
Of course she was. Marketers spend fourth-quarter budgets desperately attempting to rent authenticity that looks unvarnished. Kelce handed Honey Baked thirty years of genuine family receipt history, fresh off a partnership with Mummy Pig. When talent brings both the credibility and the location scouting to the first meeting, the client's only operational job is to cut the check and stay out of the way.
Creative teams will spend the next two months arguing over how to make seasonal dinner spreads feel earned. Honey Baked bought theirs ready-made for whatever it cost to park a production van next to the Broomall dry cleaner.