Locally Laid, the egg farm begun by a Winslow High School graduate earlier this year, learned this week that it had fallen just short of the finish line in a competition to win a commercial in the Super Bowl.

Fueled by an edgy marketing campaign that showed equal parts pluck and cluck, the Minnesota-based pasture-raised egg farm was one of four finalists in a field of 15,000 businesses that competed in the contest, which was held by Intuit, maker of the accounting software QuickBooks.

“Friends, I hate to tell you this,” co-owner Lucie Amundsen said in a Facebook post written from New York City on Thursday, “we didn’t win the 30-spot on the Super Bowl.”

GoldieBlox, a California-based company that produces princess-themed building sets to encourage engineering skills among young girls, netted the most online votes to net the grand prize, valued at $4 million.

Amundsen said the second-place finish was still a big accomplishment that has helped the company to spread its message about the higher quality of eggs from local, pasture-free chickens raised sustainably.

“The PR firm working with Intuit says that Locally Laid got media impressions that number in the billions,” Amundsen said, calling it good “for farmers raising real food everywhere.”

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Amundsen, born Lucie Belanger, still has ties to Winslow, where her parents, John and Denis Belanger, live.

She and her husband were flown to New York City along with GoldieBlox and the other finalists — Dairy Poop, an Idaho company that sells processed cow manure as fertilizer; and Barley Labs, a North Carolina firm that sells dog biscuits made from a local brewery’s recycled barley.

Because of the publicity surrounding the contest, Amundsen appeared on Fox News to tout the company, which sold its first egg in August.

The company hopes to create a network of partner farms around the country that will comply with strict sustainable standards to market their products under the Locally Laid brand.

Matt Hongoltz-Hetling — 861-9287 mhhetling@centralmaine.com Twitter: @hh_matt


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