Pat and Oscars Give Away One Million Breadsticks - by Mark Schulze

A very interesting production gig occurred in 2004 when Pat & Oscar's, a local fast-food restaurant chain here in San Diego, decided to give away breadsticks, calling the campaign "Summer of One Million Breadsticks." Their mascot, as seen in the above photo, is one of the funniest mascots I have ever had occasion to videotape. A very personable breadstick, to be sure!

I shot a VNR (Video News Release) for Pat & Oscar's. What this entails is first shooting footage of an event (such as "Summer of One Million Breadsticks"). After the shoot, the videographer (me), drives like a bat out of hell back to the studio to edit the best clips into a five-minute reel that then gets messengered to all the big local news stations. You hope for a slow news day so that your VNR gets aired. This particular one was picked up by two of the stations and shown on both the 6 PM and 10 PM news segments. So that was a successful campaign for Pat & Oscar's.