Peperami

Peperami is a pork sausage snack manufactured by Jack Link's in Germany. According to Unilever, it was first shipped to the UK by accident in a container which was supposed to be carrying pâté. The company decided to attempt to sell the shipment to the UK market under the brand name 'Peperami'. Several new varieties have been introduced over the years with varying degrees of success. Peperami may be interpreted as a portmanteau of the words "pepperoni" and "salami", but the company does not want the product to be misunderstood as a combination of these different meats. In the year 1955, Peperami was one of the products from Nabisco. When the mistake was made, the company tried the meat snack and enjoyed it. This resulted in Unilever relaunching the snack.^[1]

In 2003, to try to retain appeal to an ever more health conscious market, the manufacturers of Peperami revised the formula to produce a product with a reduction in fat, saturated fat and salt content.^[2]

In Germany, the snack is alternatively sold as BiFi and instead made out of beef. Some discontinued peperami products in Britain are still available under the BiFi brand in Germany. Another spun-off snack in Germany is the Ranger stick.

Peperami released a series of dog toys featuring the familiar Animal character. Toys include the "Salami saucer", "salami screamer", "the little nippler", "the big one", "meaty muncher", "the football fetch toy", "sausage stretch" and "flaming finger"^[3][4][5]

Unilever announced that on 21 February 2014, it had signed a definitive agreement for the sale of its meat snacks business to Jack Link’s, for an undisclosed amount.

The sale includes the brands Bifi, sold in Germany, Benelux, Austria and Switzerland, and Peperami, which retails in the UK and Ireland.

Main types

• Original, sold in a green packet (available in regular and snack size types). Introduced 1955. Spiciness: Mild.
• Hot, sold in a red packet (available in regular and snack size types). Introduced 1987. Spiciness: Hot.
• Firestick, sold in a black packet (available in regular only). Introduced 2003. Spiciness: Extremely Hot.
• Wideboy, sold in a green packet and the same flavour as Original; only wider in dimension. Introduced 1996.

Current variants

• Peperami Bunch of 5s, packs containing five small Peperami sticks, introduced 1995.
• Peperami Lunchbox Minis (formerly Peperami Minis). A small bag of snack-size sausages. Originally called Peperami Mini, they were relaunched as Lunchbox Minis in 2008.
• Peperami Double Crunch Peanuts, peanuts with a Peperami-flavoured coating.
• Peperami Roll, sold in a green packet; an Original Peperami wrapped in hard bread. The BiFi version, BiFi Roll Pepperoni, is still available. Originally introduced in 2006 as "Peperami in a Roll". Reintroduced in 2015 alongside a Hot variety.
• Peperami Tex Mex, sold in an orange packet; a Mexican-flavored version of the original. Introduced in 2016.

Discontinued variants

• Peperami Dunkers, a snack-size sausage with a dipping sauce
• Barbecue, sold in a purple packet (available in regular and snack size types); a barbecue-flavoured version of the Original. Introduced 2009. Spiciness: Mild.
• Peperami Sarni, a handheld snack with sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese, wrapped in soft bread. Introduced 2004.
• Canniballs, a sausage wrapped in crusty brown bread. Introduced 2004
• Peperami Noodles, a snack similar to Super Noodles which comes with Peperami slices and powdered flavouring. Introduced 2005
• Cheezie Peperami sold in an yellow packet; a version of the Original pepperami but made entirely from a "spicy" processed cheese. Introduced August 1997
• Peperami Pizza, a 7" thin crust cheese and tomato pizza with peperami slices in lieu of peperoni. Distributed by Bakkovar, who made its unique crisping disk. Introduced 2009.
• Peperami Nibblers, bite-size sausages (about half the length of the snack-size sausages) in a bag. Introduced 2010.
• Pork Farms Peperami Spicy Hit: 6 Snack Sausage Rolls, six small sausage rolls - the sausage is a Peperami.
• Gobbler, sold in a purple packet; a turkey-flavoured version of the Original. Introduced 1996.

Advertising

Since 1993 the brand has been advertised by a talking peperami known as "the Animal" ("That crazy wee fella"), who was voiced by Ade Edmondson until 2010 and since 2014 is voiced by Enn Reitel. As well as occasionally Rupert Farley. The product is marketed as The Spicy Meat Snack with the slogan "Peperami: It's a Bit of an Animal".

Historically, each variant of Peperami has had a different version of the tagline depending on which variant is advertised. The Cheezie variant never had a slogan, instead the cheezie character DJ Cheezie (voiced by Lenny Henry) would normally say something (Usually Any Hotter, I'd be Fondue) next to an image of the snack and 'New!' banner. DJ Cheezie appeared in the first four advertisements for the snack. He resembled a yellow version of "the animal" with hair, and ran a fictional radio station. In the late 1980s, starting in 1987, before "the animal" was featured in the advertiments, a series of advertisements with the slogan "Get Your Teeth Into A Peperami" aired instead. One such advertisement from 1989 titled Venus Fly Trap saw a man feed a Venus flytrap a Peperami.

Unilever recently decided to drop its ad agency of 16 years, Lowe, and has turned to the crowdsourcing platform IdeaBounty to find creative ideas for its next Peperami TV campaign. Unilever had worked with Lowe on the snack food brand since 1993, but decided to crowdsource its brief and take “The Animal” to the public, rather than a small team of creatives.^[6] The result was the advert for the latest product, Peperami Nibblers. Likewise, Unilever used integrated agency Billington Cartmell to tie into the 2010 Football World Cup, with the character – now transformed into the "Fanimal" – on posters (notably in pub's gents toilets with risque slogans), print ads, radio spots, an interactive website and even distributed in the form of a shouting rubber mascot.^[7]

Other advertisements, in other media aside from television, include Animal, released in 1996 as an advergame,^[8] and a notable ad, printed in magazines and on billboards, featured the "Animal" burning on a heater, as a launch for their new Firestick flavour. This ad was accompanied by a television advert titled Arson Fire (which was a remake of the ad for the Hot flavour).

Some of the television adverts appear on the Peperami website. These are Horror Movie (July 1993), Wimp (March 1994), Kebab (May 1994), Arson Fire (March 2004), Tender (September 2008) and Exfoliate (September 2008)

In May 2014, after a four-year break a new advert was launched featuring the Animal eating one of his hands as part of his five a day.

In April 2015 Jack Link's launched a new series of adverts for Peperami and BIFI, starring the original animal after a new and tasty CGI make-over. The ads were directed by Pierre Bertrand and produced by creative agency BSUR and production company Not To Scale Amsterdam.

Slogans

• Get Your Teeth Into a Peperami (1988-1989)
• It's a Bit of an Animal (1993–present)
• Are You Barmy about Salami? (2007–present, used on packaging)
• Peperami, 100% Pork Salami (2007)
• The Spicy Meat Snack (1988-2007, used on packaging)
• A Bit of Fun for Your Animal (2011–present, used on the dog toys)
• It's a Little Bit of an Animal (for Peperami Minis, later Peperami Lunchbox Minis)/They're Little Bits of an Animal (for Peperami Nibblers)
• Share, Snack & Scoff' (for Peperami Nibblers, used on packaging)
• It's a Fiery Peperami (for Peperami Hot)
• It's a Red Hot Peperami (2004, for Peperami Firestick)
• It's Peperami, Gone a Bit Noodles (for Peperami Noodles)
• It's a Bit More of an Animal (for Peperami Wideboy)
• New BBQ Flavour Peperami (for BBQ Peperami)
• It's a Bit of an Animal Inside (2015, for reintroduced Peperami Roll)
• It's a Bit of Alright (1996, for Peperami Gobbler)
• Any Hotter, I'd be Fondue (1997, for Peperami Cheezie)
• All Pork, No Bull! (TBC – present, used on Original Wideboy packaging)

Meat content

Until 2017, Peperami Original was generally made with 37.5g of pork meat for every 25g of sausage and Peperami Wideboy is made from 60g of pork meat per 40g sausage. The discrepancy is due to weight loss when the meat is dried, from the loss of moisture in the meat. Due to shrinkflation in 2017 the Original product size was reduced from 25g to 22.5g.^[9]

Fat content

• Peperami Original are 44% fat.
• Peperami Wideboy are 49% fat.
• Peperami Hot are 44% fat.
• Peperami Firestick are 44% fat.
• Peperami Mini are 30% fat.

Notes

• Unilever make a similar snack in Germany called the BiFi, except it is made from beef. Traditionally, BiFi has yellow packaging over Peperami's green, although the 'BiFi Roll Korn' has green and yellow packaging. Various flavours and variants of BiFi include:
  • Original - The original BiFi, almost half the size of a peperami
  • Original XXL - Wider original BiFi, almost the size of a peperami
  • Roll - Similar to Peperami Cannibals
  • Carazza - Similar to Peperami Sarni. A larger version called Carazza XXL is also made.
  • Peperoni - A regular Original bar (size of XXL) but instead made of pepperoni, making it more like a peperami
  • Minis - Bags of small original BiFis. Similar to 'Peperami Minis', 'Peperami Lunchox Minis' and 'Peperami Nibblers'
• Unilever also make a similar snack in Germany called Ranger. Ranger comes in dark red packaging and is essentially BiFi sausage in tomato sauce and a bread roll. BiFi own the product, technically, and mark it as one of their own products, thus the relation to Peperami.
• The original stick is the only Peperami variant to be sold in different sizes, these being regular, mini, 'nibblers' and 'wideboy'.
• The 'Peperami Firestick' was introduced in 2004, along with Cannibals and Sarni.

References

External links

• Peperami website
• Unilever goes crowdsourcing to spice up Peperami's TV ads, By Mark Sweeney, The Guardian, August 25, 2009.