It's a great thing to be involved in something that people are having fun with.'īefore BBDO reached out to him, Mr. 'Overwhelmingly, the reactions have been positive, it's fun, it's light-hearted,' Mr. (He was not familiar to a woman sitting nearby -a vegan without a TV.) Earlier this month, a man next to him on an airplane recognized Mr. Soon after, he was at a swim meet with his daughters, and some kids came over to ask if he was the guy who does the pizza commercials, showing how closely connected the foods are. 'When the commercial first aired, my social media exploded,' Mr. Baseline sales, those excluding any kinds of offers, rose more than 3% during last year's run, said Mr. The campaign is delivering in a category that tends to be promoted with discounts. Similar spikes occurred again in January 2017, when the brand's 'Dance' spot starring Mr. Within the first week, Google searches for 'Hormel pepperoni' and just 'pepperoni' were climbing. The timing was critical, as Hormel and BBDO wanted to take advantage of a key selling season for pepperoni, with the Super Bowl and other gatherings taking place. In mid-January 2016, 'My Pepperona,' the brand's take on 'My Sharona,' began airing. It was as stressful as an academic senior recital because if this doesn't work, there's a lot of stuff on the line for everybody that has worked on this for the last two months.' 'I've spent years in conservatory training and all kinds of different lessons and those were two of the most challenging hours. 'I had two hours by myself with the contraption and it happened,' he said. He put on 'the contraption,' as he sometimes calls it, and he wondered if he could play it. In the fall of 2015, he was flown to Los Angeles for production. Meixner lives, to fit him for the mix of one-man band instruments he carries in the spots. Soon, representatives came to Florida, where Mr. 'When we saw it, we knew it was the right fit for Hormel pepperoni.' 'He's actually the sole audition, the first and only audition,' said Scott Schraufnagel, BBDO's group account director on Hormel refrigerated meat products. He quickly needed an audition tape of him playing 'My Sharona,' so in between gigs, his saxophone player shot some video on an iPhone. Meixner thought one of his friends might be playing an elaborate prank.

And he kept performing, later on with his own eponymous band, which now does about 120 shows per year. The word 'polka' became less of a stigma and more of a unique oddity, for lack of a better term.' He started to see younger people coming to shows he played with his father. As it turned out, 'There was a resurgence. 'You couldn't be an accordion major,' he said. Meixner went on to graduate from Ithaca College with trumpet performance and music education degrees, though the accordion is the instrument he is most associated with to this day.

They relocated to the Orlando, Fla., area when his father got a job as a musician at Epcot Center. Meixner's father had a band, a recording studio and a record shop that was also a mail-order business for items including polka recordings when the family lived in Pennsylvania.

There’s also a foot pedal for controlling the app hands-free.Bachelor's degree, trumpet performance and music education, Ithaca College master's degree, trumpet performance, Pennsylvania State University You could also get a technician to do it for you, though.īut the company is also selling the system pre-installed on three guitar models, two acoustics and one electric. It looks like buyers will need some basic soldering skills to add the OMB to their instruments. But you will need to modify your guitar somewhat. The “capacitive and inductive tech” used here avoids latency issues, allegedly. Hang on, won’t there be latency? OMB say they have that covered. The system comes in two versions for acoustic and electric guitars respectively. The system is made up of a bit of hardware that’s fitted to your guitar and an app running on a tablet.īut One Man Band can also convert your guitar’s signal into MIDI, so in theory you can use this device to control synths, MIDI hardware and plug-ins in your DAW of choice. OMB aims to make that happen – or at least to give players a toolkit that lets them play other instruments and/or play along to backing tracks. It is often said that guitarists sometime have a narcissistic tendency and that if they could, they would play every instrument in a band.

One man band instrument called