“Salsa from New York City?” (Pace picante sauce commercials)

In the 1980s, Pace picante sauce- ran a series of commercials touting its native southwest appeal. Another salsa was from - horrors! -- New York City! The popular advertising campaign was revived in 2004.

The advertising came straight from Madison Avenue!


Google Groups: alt.religion.kibology
From: Chris McGonnell
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 12:33:12 -0500

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 01:00:16 -0500, James "Kibo" Parry wrote:
>I bet you get your salsa
>from NEW YORK CITY!

Well, hell yeah, the hottest salsa in the world is made by Dominicans in New York, not by wimps in Tejas!

USA Today
Pace pokes more fun at NYC
By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY
November 7, 2004
NEW YORK — New York and the city's natives and their eccentricities have long been fodder for parody in movies, TV shows and commercials.

Pace Picante sauce recently rediscovered the popularity of the New York theme by bringing back its long-running ad campaign from the 1980s.

In ads that ran for a decade, Southwestern cowboys made fun of people who bought salsa that came from New York City, an unlikely source for authentic salsa.

The ads and the message were "very, very persistent stuff," says James Caporimo, a Brooklyn native and executive vice president and executive creative director at ad agency Young & Rubicam.

"Every time we walked into a focus group, people said, 'Is that salsa from New York City?' It became part of the DNA of the Pace brand."

Aggie Athletics
(New York Times article of 21 September 2004 - ed.)

In the 1980's, Pace sought to burnish its credentials as an authentic picante sauce by showing cowboys angered when their chuckwagon cook replaced their favorite, Texas-made brand with one made in New York City.

"Get a rope," one cowpoke says at the end of the commercial, as the announcer proclaims: "Pick up the original. Pick up the Pace."

The menacing tone has been supplanted with a humorous tack in two new television commercials by Young & Rubicam Advertising in New York -- yes, New York -- part of the Young & Rubicam Brands division of the WPP Group. In both spots, Westerners enjoying Pace meals watch bemusedly as a tenderfoot — who, the characters tell each other "gets his salsa from New York City" — betrays his urban origins.
(...)
The original campaign was "not based on one of our primary competitors being made in New York City," Mr. Foley says, "but that Pace's roots, back to the 40's, are in Texas, and though we are headquartered herein New Jersey, the product is made in Texas."It would be as if a commercial for New York bagels showed "a guy gets his bagels from San Antonio," he adds.
(...)
In the first spot, the real cowboys watch as the naive visitor attempts his own version of branding cattle: pulling two cans of spray paint from his holster to tag a cow with a large "X." One cowboy asks the others, "Who's that?" and the reply is, "Another guy who gets his salsa from New York City."In the second spot, the Texans watch as the tenderfoot carefully ties his horse to a hitching post, then presses a button to activate a car alarm — the familiar "beep beep" — indicating the alarm is armed. This time, the response to "Who's that?" is "That's the guy who gets his salsa from New York City." At the end of the spot, a dog runs over to the horse, setting off the alarm with a loud din. In both commercials, after the tenderfeet reveal their roots, an announcer declares, " 'Round here, there's only one word for salsa — Pace — made in the Southwest the right way." The spots conclude with the Pace theme, "Grab the Southwest by the bottle," which was introduced in the last couple of years.