KERRY’S CCREW
A REAL WORKOUT FOR BOOK LOVERS. Weight-watching cola drinkers are getting a double bang from boxcar-size supermarket displays of Diet Coke these days – a mind-expanding premium plus a body-building workout. Twelve-packs now in the market include neat little 30-page excerpts from six current best-sellers. But the first one I got was – Yecccchhhhh! – Chicken Soup for the Couple’s Soul, so it was back to the Super Stop & Shop for Elmore Leonard’s Be Cool – even if I had to rearrange the entire gondola. Pumping aluminum cans can get some burn going. Creative credit goes out to Hotlanta, though: This is the first we’ve-done-something-different promo we’ve seen for ages in the cola wars.
PROMOTION’S OWN DiMAGGIO. Those who know him tend to overuse the term “class act” in reference to former FCB Impact agency head Joe Flanagan, but that’s what he is: a soft-spoken, down-to-earth guy whose only boast was that his top-flight Chicago-based promotion shop was “home-grown,” over the years becoming a $20 million (net revenue) stand-alone unit of FCB Worldwide. Joe, sidekick Sherwin Leff, and the Impact team were across the hall but a world away from their burgeoning ad-agency parent, now a unit of far-flung True North Communications Inc, which bills itself as “the world’s sixth-largest advertising holding company” (whatever that is). Joe has stepped down from Impact, of course (see story, page 42), but he’s back in the batter’s box with something called Flanagan Marketing.
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL! Can you believe that Levi’s – the pants that swept the world and undermined the Soviet Empire – are on the skids with American teenagers? Sales plunged 15 percent last year, causing Levi Strauss & Co. to shut down half its U.S. plants. The solution is to move millions of marketing bucks into music sponsorships, according to Joe Townsend, manager of sponsorships for the San Fran-based company The idea is to reach and win back its 15-to-24-year old target customers, who are watching less TV. The company has signed a three-year, mega-buck deal with New York City-based SFX Entertainment, one of the largest live event producers, to build Levi-labeled stages at major concerts. Good move, Levi’s. Just don’t book Clapton to sing “Bell Bottom Blues.”
I’LL BE YOUR FLY ON THE WALL. “Lessons for the Next Generation” is a rather presumptuous-sounding title for a panel on Day Two of the spring meeting of the Association of Promotion Marketing Agencies (APMA) Worldwide in London this month. Presumptuous but for the industry-giant status of the speakers: Keith Bantick, former ceo and worldwide creative director of Ogilvy & Mather unit Promotional Campaigns Ltd.; Barry Clarke, co-founder and principal in Clarke Hooper plc, one of the U.K.’s fastest-growing promotion agencies of the ’90s; former Impact ceo Joseph Flanagan (see above); and Brian Francis, former partner at Francis, Killingbeck Bain, which skyrocketed and then fell to earth in the late ’80s. Watch for my report in the May issue.
FLYING HIGH FOR THE HUNGRY. Hats off to Vanguard Airlines Inc., Kansas City, KS, for a cause-related promo that gave away 2,000 round-trip tickets from Chicago’s Midway Airport to destinations such as Atlanta, Minneapolis, Myrtle Beach, and Pittsburgh – and fed hundreds of hungry people in the process. Partnered with an outfit that supplies 550 Chicago-area soup kitchens and homeless shelters, the company gave away a free round-trip ticket to anyone who donated two cases (48 cans) of food between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. on March 11. Two thousand folks got cheap airline seats and hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans learned about Vanguard on news reports. Airline ceo “Rocky” Spane said that his company has collected 96 tons of food in similar promos in five other cities since it was founded in 1997. Vanguard turned its first profit last year.
BE A PRO. MAKE THE DEADLINE. Entries for the 1999 World PRO Awards of Excellence are due by the 15th of this month. If you don’t have the guts to enter that last, great campaign you led, then you won’t get it the recognition that it deserves. Your agency will lose braggingrights and new business – and you could miss out on the last raise or bonus of the millennium. So light a fire under your creatives. Tell them the new “portfolio” format makes the entry process quicker, easier, and cheaper. If you need help or an entry form, e-mail joelle_kanuck @intertec.com or call her at (203) 358-3715. Promotion players from around the world will applaud the winners at PROMO Expo in Chicago on September 14.
BBDO’S LOSS MAY BE APMA’S GAIN. The surprise departure of Kevin Astle from Toronto-based GeneratorIdeaworks may have been a parting of ways for “philosophical” reasons, as Astle put it (He wanted to open an office in Chicago; his partners at BBDO didn’t.) but it’s a windfall for APMA Worldwide, whose two-year presidency he assumed last fall. That organization is likely to get more of his much-needed attention over the next few weeks as judging activities get under way in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific regions for the World PRO Awards. Astle needed permission — which he got – to continue as president while he is “between jobs,” as APMA members have to be agency partners, principals or presidents.
