The Glass is Half-Full

A handful of disparate beverage brands are relying on premiums and sweeps this winter to boost retail presence and, for one, to rev bottlers.

Dr Pepper/Seven Up Cos. will field two first-quarter sweeps as part of an umbrella-promotion strategy that caters to bottlers. Separately, Minute Maid taps its 18-month-old licensing deal with Disney Co. for a spring promo tied to Piglet’s Big Movie. And finally, The Hain Celestial Group fields an in-pack diamond giveaway to maximize its real estate on shelves.

Dr Pepper (DPSU) adds account-specific overlays to national promotions to capitalize on the fact that 7UP is the No. 1 brand for 80- to 90-percent of its bottlers — the first time DPSU has enjoyed that position. National umbrella promos play up its five key brands (7UP, A&W, Sunkist, Canada Dry, and Hawaiian Punch). Tailoring overlays has raised retailer participation seven-fold since 2000, when DPSU formed its trade marketing team to customize national programs. Now 30,000 to 35,000 stores field DPSU promos, up from 4,000 to 5,000; its spring 2002 basketball effort ran in 15,000 stores, up from 4,500 stores in 2001.

“It’s a simple strategy. The trick is to marry retailers’ strategies with our brands,” says Rob Colarossi, vp-channel marketing and promotions. The Plano, TX-based company studies retailers’ merchandising strategies and consumer profiles, then sets a menu of overlays for its bottlers and sales team.

Take the first-quarter ESPN tie-in, a You Own the Zone sweeps awarding a three-day trip for six to any ESPN Zone restaurant the winner chooses. ESPN is “the big umbrella we can execute anywhere,” says director of promotions Carol Duncan. Then DPSU taps its sponsorship of six conferences (including Pac-10 and Big East) to customize P-O-P and in-store events. Retailers get “in-store theater” display pieces with local team logoes, or “transaction-building packages” as well as the sweeps, says Colarossi. Past basketball promos — DPSU sponsors ESPN’s “Championship Week” — put Pop-a-Shot contests in Wal-Mart stores and brought Albertson’s center-court for a free-throw contest. 141 Communicator, Chicago, handles.

“The key is to balance [brands’] consumer equity with trade extensions,” says Duncan.

DPSU reviews sponsorships each year to see what’s valuable to bottlers, retailers, and consumers. Good sponsorship deals provide a platform for account-specific and volume-driving promos. Upcoming promos will tap current ties to eBay and the Grammy Awards.

Meanwhile, 7UP targets college kids with a Sun, Sand, and $7 Grand under-the-cap sweeps tied to MTV Spring Break. Grand prize is $7,000 for a spring break trip. Zipatoni, St. Louis, handles. A brand-specific promo for Sunkist expands ethnic marketing by adding San Antonio, Houston, and Chicago to its 2003 itinerary for the Sunkist SunLab Tour, which launched this year by sending a mobile stage to African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Birmingham, AL. Teens and young adults perform for each other and sample Sunkist. Mosaic Relevance Marketing, Addison, TX, handles.

Sunkist and 7UP are the only brands to get national ads next year, with new renditions under 7UP’s theme “Make 7UP Yours” and Sunkist’s “Experience the Charge,” targeting multi-cultural teens. Young & Rubicam, New York City, handles 7UP; FCB, Chicago, handles Sunkist.

Juiced Up

Minute Maid will tie in with the theatrical release of Piglet’s Big Movie from Disney’s Buena Vista, slated for a spring premiere. Details aren’t set, but the match is “a perfect fit for our Hundred Acre Wood brand,” says Greg Schwarz, associate brand manager for Disney products at Houston-based Minute Maid.

The Coca-Cola division launched Hundred Acre Wood and Disney Xtreme! Coolers in September 2001 and has fielded a handful of promos with Disney properties.

The licensing deal with Disney “offers us a nice variety of properties and their partner to work with,” says Schwarz. “It fits so seamlessly with our brand.”

Hasbro (another Disney licensee) tapped Xtreme! Coolers this fall to launch Disney Wild Racers toy cars. Minute Maid packed Hasbro-made Xtreme! Coolers cars and license plates in juice 10-packs. “It was our first Cracker Jack moment,” says Schwarz. “In-pack premiums are common in cereal, but not so much with juice. We saw sales lifts in base and incremental volume.”

Ten-packs also carried coupons for 50 cents off Hasbro cars in-store, and a $4 self-liquidating offer for a carrying case. It was labor-intensive to insert premiums at processing plants, but worth the effort, says Schwarz.

A May-to-June sweeps piggybacked Walt Disney World’s 100 Years of Magic campaign with an on-pack sweeps: Trading cards carried a code that kids entered online to see if they won a family trip to Disney World. Minute Maid got 2.2 million page views. Momentum North America, St. Louis, is agency of record.

Sampling, P-O-P, and events also support the international rollout of Minute Maid’s Disney-brand drinks in Switzerland, Spain, and the Dominican Republic this fall, bringing distribution to 15 countries. (McDonald’s restaurants in Portugal carry the drinks.) Minute Maid projects Disney-brand sales will reach $400 million by yearend.

Minute Maid’s non-Disney brands participate in Coke’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets push this quarter with two instant-win sweeps awarding trips to London. Juice pouches serve as game pieces: Winning pouches are the same color as Quidditch balls in the movie. A second, under-the-cap sweeps for orange and apple juice gives Potter-themed Legos and $5 movie certificates as secondary prizes.

Minute Maid leads the $188 million aseptic juice business with a 39-percent share. Sales rose 36 percent to $73.5 million for 52 weeks ended Oct. 6, per Information Resources Inc. Xtreme! Coolers sales hit $41 million in sales; Hundred Acre Wood sold $29.4 million, IRI reports.

Three-karat tea

Celestial Seasonings runs its biggest in-pack promo ever, awarding 500 diamond necklaces via an instant-win sweeps. Fourteen million packages carry game cards inside and stickers upfront to flag the November-to-March sweeps. Integer Group’s High Altitude Promotion Services, Golden, CO, handles.

“We’ve done so well with in-packs that we decided to expand,” says vp-marketing Cecelia Atkinson. Past efforts gave away Amazon.com gift certificates and small tins with Celestial’s signature artwork. A fall sampling push put new black and herb/green tea varieties in six million packages. “Our consumers use a wide variety of teas,” says Atkinson. “We try to introduce them to new flavors all the time.”

Licensee Arizona Tea Co. will roll out two Celestial Seasonings flavors now testing in three markets. Celestial and Arizona collaborate on marketing.

Celestial Seasonings sales fell 1.7 percent to $98.4 million for 52 weeks ended Oct. 6, a 14.8-percent share of the $664.5 million bag and loose-tea segment, per IRI. Celestial Seasonings’ ad spending has shifted to print from TV; DDB, San Francisco, handles.