The Nation’s Top Promoted Brands

There’s a classic Far Side cartoon that shows Einstein at his blackboard, puzzling through a ridiculously convoluted formula. In the middle, tucked among the cosines and variables, it says, “A miracle happens,” and voila! There follows the solution.

So it is with branding through promotion. A marketer can have all the basic ingredients for a great campaign – big brand awareness, big budget, big idea, minute execution – and it still needs some ineffable miracle to come true in the minds of consumers. The ultimate home run, of course, is the promotion that serves up a meat pitch right down the middle of people’s lifestyle strike zones, resulting in a fat wallop of incremental sales for the brand.

Most brands hit it once in a while, the big idea that gives instant visibility to the brand. Like Heublein’s Cuervo Nation, a Caribbean island co-opted to host tequila parties for sweepstakes winners. Others build a brand-centric winning streak, like m&m/Mars’ rainbow of promos for m&ms, from its name-the-new-color contest to the “impostor” gray m&m and the millennium candy (one piece marked “mm,” instead of the usual “m”) worth cash to the consumers who find them.

Some of these become brand icons in their own right: Bud Bowl. Gillette’s $1 million free throw. Taco Bell’s nervy chihuahua.

Then there are categories in which ongoing promotion is the price of entry – fast food, soft drinks. We expect something new every six weeks. Some brands live up to the creative grind. Others are like a low-grade fever that won’t go away, but won’t spike, either.

We tip our hats to them all. But only the best made promo’s short list – the top spenders, the biggest thinkers, the consistent home run hitters. These are the brands that manage to put together the whole formula – miracle included – time after time.

McDonald’s U.S. Sales: $13.6 billion for Jan.-Sept. ’98; $17.1 billion for ’97

International Sales: $13 billion for Jan.-Sept. 98; $16.5 billion for ’97

Est. Promo spending: $200 million to $250 million

Ad spending: $322 million for Jan.-July ’98; $578 million for ’97

Promotion strategy: McDonald’s took a page from Disney and buttoned up its promotion process. These days McD sets its calendar early, then concentrates on franchisee execution. Six big national promos are better than 12 hurried ones.

“Our strategy mirrors our vision statement: To be the world’s best fast-food experience,” says McDonald’s spokeswoman Amy Murray. “We do everything on behalf of our customers to make their experience the best possible.”

Tactics: Happy Meals; film tie-ins via Disney (kids) and its Touchstone studio (teens and adults); continuity games; testing frequent-user cards, phone cards, digital point-of-purchase regionally.

’98 highlights: Supplies of Teeny Beanie Babies held up after embarrassing shortages in ’97. McD doubled up and ordered nearly 200 million toys this time. The offer “obviously raised store sales,” says Ron Paul, president of restaurant consultancy Technomic, Chicago.

The summer tie-in with Disney’s release of Mulan was McDonald’s first-ever global Happy Meal, using the same premiums worldwide. That massive buying clout gave McD great pricing, and gave kids the coolest Happy Meal toys since Lion King. Look for similar success from the holiday release of A Bug’s Life, with oversized, high-tech toys.

At the same time it went global, McD downscaled regionally, restructuring U.S. operations into five regional divisions, each run by its own president. Promotion calendars get six national campaigns (four with Disney), with the remaining six to eight windows open for regional promos. That gives marketers leeway for such intriguing promotions as a Colorado Lottery ticket giveaway this summer, and the Big Mac with a Sprint phonecard on the side running in Detroit restaurants this fall. “The divisions are a great testing ground for promotions,” says a source close to McDonald’s. The regional time slots “give owner/operators more ownership, which means better execution, and more ideas will bubble up from owners” and make the national slate.

Monopoly, this year in its eighth rendition, keeps getting bigger and better as McDonald’s adds partners and finds new ways to distribute game boards, especially in ethnic neighborhoods. That’s McDonald’s strength: It takes something consumers know and ratchets it up.

Like Big Mac. The Get Back with Big Mac promo pegged to the sandwich’s 30th anniversary hit at the height of retro- ’70s craze and dovetailed with Volkswagen’s reintro of the Beetle beautifully.

The April opening of Walt Disney World’s ballyhooed Animal Kingdom was a p.r. coup for McDonald’s, despite those annoying inquiries into animal deaths in the park.

Where it goes from here: Oh, you mean besides four Disney shindigs a year into the year 2007? “We’ll continue to go for the most relevant and trendy properties, things we’re sure our customers will like,” the spokeswoman says. A Happy Meal featuring this holiday season’s hot toy sensation, the interactive stuffed animal Furby, is on the books for ’99.

Ronald continues to get a cartoon facelift in the video series that was introduced in October with Scared Silly, animated by Rugrats artists at Klasky Csupo. The plan is to contemporize “brand Ronald” as a hip, animated magic clown instead of the dorky ’70s magic clown he is in live-action. (Don’t worry, the live-action Ronald stays sacred, and will continue to appear only as prescribed in McD’s stylebook. He is, after all, McDonald’s Mickey Mouse.)

Can Beanie Babies fly a third time? Bet money on it.

Biggest marketing advantage: Duh. Disney. Two years into their 10-year deal, the partners are working on promos 18 months out, giving each a full six to nine months more lead time than the standard 9-12 months for fast food campaigns. That translates into better creative, better buy-in from franchisees, better execution. Now, if Disney could just cough up a recipe for better burgers.

McDonald’s size helps it woo big properties and blanket the marketplace. “We see our size as an advantage, because we can leverage it and go after hot properties,” Murray says. It doesn’t hurt to have 13,000 pieces of prime real estate, either. Turn those restaurants into soapboxes, and it becomes a pretty powerful marketing network.

Biggest marketing disadvantages: Its own success. “How can they top their last campaign? Can they keep hitting home runs?” asks Paul of Technomic. “The more your success is tied to promotion, the more you have to do it. It’s like a drug, but there’s no way around it – heavy promotion is the reality of the category.”

Exclusivity with Disney cuts out a lot of potential tie-ins with other properties that could wind up in the hands of Burger King, Taco Bell, or even Subway. It’s “a stumbling block of their own making,” says an exec close to the McDonald’s/Disney deal. Still, the pros outweigh the cons, and McD has learned execution from the master: Decide your tactic early on, button up the details, and execute the hell out of it.

Oak Brook is still rebuilding its credibility with franchisees after its ’97 fiascos with Campaign 55 and Arch Deluxe. Sales have been good this year, up 6 percent through third quarter, and franchisees liked the ’99 calendar presented to them in October. Outsiders think ’99 promotions will go well enough to convince franchisees that the corporate braintrust is back on track.

Lead promotion agencies: Cyrk-Simon Worldwide, Los Angeles; Frankel & Co., Chicago (merchandising); The Marketing Store, (toy development)

Huh? Oak Brook still hasn’t filled the top marketing post, empty since Brad Ball bowed out in April to move back to Los Angeles. Word is McDonald’s has offered the job to at least three candidates, but no one’s biting. The question is either: A) Why hasn’t McDonald’s been able to fill the job, or B) Since the team led by RJ Milano and David Baney has handled marketing so adeptly in the interim, why is McDonald’s still looking? -Betsy Spethmann

Coca-Cola Worldwide sales: $14.4 billion for Jan.-Sept. ’98; $18.9 billion for ’97

Est. promo spending: $200 million

Ad spending (brand Coca-Cola): $97 million for Jan.-July ’98; $156 million for ’97

Promotion strategy: Simply put, it’s Always Coca-Cola. Occasion-based campaigns in a wide range of channels reach consumers at work, school, and play. Value-added offers build the brand asset; hip applications of new technology reinforce Coke’s image as a cultural leader.

Tactics: National Football League sponsorship; in-pack and under-the-cap offers including ATM cards; loyalty cards with local offers; catchy P-O-P in myriad venues; campus events.

’98 highlights: There’s a new take on the business following the departure of marketing wizard Sergio Zyman. Charles Frenette grew up on the bottling side – it was the family business – and he’s empathetic to bottlers’ needs. That, coupled with a reorg that framed Coke promotions by season and geographic region, will mean more market-specific promotions as Atlanta strives to listen to bottlers and be relevant locally.

Witness the $75 million Coke Card campaign. Loyalty cards distributed to teens nationally at the beginning of the summer were good for offers at local restaurants, theaters, and attractions all season long. It was the biggest-ever national execution of local marketing, with 9,500 partners and 280 localized versions. Bottlers teamed with Coke’s Marketing Works unit to enlist retail partners and recruited teens to hand out cards. Bottlers signed up schools for a contest that had teens devise the best way to distribute cards. Merchant partners loved the free publicity on Coke Card sleeves, each containing 50 local offers.

Coke’s objective was to create a 360-degree landscape where there is a Coke at every touch point in a consumer’s day, a source says. Coke also went for a second go-round with its MasterCard ATM card giveaway, seeding cards worth $20 to $200 in cases. Internationally, Coke tapped its eight-year World Cup sponsorship for Coca-Cola Youth Program activities for kids in 70 countries.

Where it goes from here: The card gets bigger and better, adding voicemail and on-line components. Coke will be using digital communication technology to send different messages to outlets based on time of day.

Watch for broader reach through local partnerships, and edgier creative. They’re allowing their promotion agencies to be more strategic, creative, and brand-centric. You are going to see innovative ideas for brand asset building, says one agency source.

Coke equally apportioned promo assignments among its agencies this year. Next year, tasks will be assigned based on merit once Coke sees who did best this year.

Biggest marketing advantages: Bottler support. Without it, execution would be impossible, especially on the micro level that Coke is trying.

Icon status and a clear brand message worldwide. “Coke has built momentum for its core brands – Coke Classic, Diet Coke, and Sprite – through a consistent theme and message in its marketing,” says analyst Skip Carpenter of Donaldson, Lufkin, Jenrette, New York.

Biggest marketing disadvantage: The potential for disarray. Coke is already burdened by layers of bureaucracy. Keeping the details straight on hundreds of local variations for a whopping national campaign could get nightmarish.

Lead promo agencies: Dugan Valva Contess, Morristown, NJ; BEN Marketing Group, Stamford, CT; McCracken Brooks, Minneapolis; Upshot, Chicago.

Huh? Coke is testing a loyalty program in Hawaii using school lunch cards. Kids earn points for eating in the cafeteria and for buying Coke; points can be redeemed at local merchants for special offers. What will the PTA president say? -David Vaczek

Levi’s Jeans Worldwide sales: $6.6 to $7 billion for ’98; $6.9 billion for ’97

Est. promo spending: $50 million to $64 million

Ad Spending: $97.8 million for Jan.-July ’98

Promotion strategy: To overcome image problems as “the jeans your father wore,” Levi Strauss & Co. is reinforcing Levi’s brand image as the jeans for fashionable teens to regain brand leadership among young consumers. To compete with designer labels and store brands, Levi Strauss diversified its lineup with SilverTab jeans, Dockers, and Slates and tailors promotions and direct mail to different demographic groups.

Tactics: Event marketing for younger consumers, such as Lilith Fair, with ad support that plays up event sponsorship; a matchmaking service and profiles of emerging bands on Levi’s Web site; extensive direct mail.

’98 highlights: Levi Strauss won a Gold Pro Award for its 1997 Dance and Levi’s campaign in Israel, a 24-hour dance party in the Negev desert. Levi’s wowed 16- to 20-year-olds by bringing in top bands and leading DJ’s from around the world and constructing a massive outdoor amphitheater for the festival. Shoppers who bought a pair of Levi’s during the promotion period got half off their concert ticket; purchase of a second Levi’s item earned a free concert T-shirt. TV, outdoor, and P-O-P supported, and Levi’s reps visited college campuses and public venues to hand out info on the fete. Radio spots played tunes from appearing bands and artist interviews; MTV aired live clips throughout Europe. Sales jumped 25 percent. Four thousand of the 25,000 discount tickets distributed were redeemed; music stores sold 9,000 concert CDs after the event. Levi’s Europe is staging similar events throughout the region.

Sister brand Slates courted upscale businessmen with a style guide, free for trying on a pair of slacks at one of 25 major retail chains. The guide ran photo features on popular restaurants across the U.S. plus restaurant info from Zagat Survey. A mail-in form in the guide entered shoppers in a sweeps to win a trip to one of 10 featured cities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington. Slates buyers also got a certificate worth $25 at one of the guide’s featured restaurants.

Then there was that Vogue spread featuring divas Sarah McLachlan and Liz Phair in Levi’s. Lilith Fair never looked so good.

Where it goes from here: Tie-ins, partnerships, more parties. “We are alert for strategic partnerships, tie-ins, and any other marketing opportunities for our array of brands,” a spokesman says.

Biggest marketing advantage: Deep-seated reverence for that 125-year-old brand name, and a shift to a brand management system for international marketing. Levi Strauss has coordinated activities between its designers and sales and marketing staffs, which used to work independently and usually at odds.

Biggest marketing disadvantage: Tommy Hilfiger and The Gap. Levi Strauss faces a tough battle as competitors bid for the fickle 16-24 age group always looking for the next hot fashion. Upstarts like Jnco and hip-hop faves like Tommy have a novelty Levi’s can’t imitate. Levi’s overall share of men’s and women’s denim jeans sales slipped to 16.7 percent in June from about 18.7 percent at the end of 1997, according to retail consultancy Tactical Retail Monitor.

Lead promotion agencies: Highway One, San Francisco; Miller/Huber Relationship Marketing, San Francisco; Ketchum Public Relations, San Francisco.

Huh? Last year Levi Strauss shot itself in the foot when it switched to team production from its longtime piecemeal system. That fiasco cut productivity by 77 percent and shattered morale. -Richard Sale

Miller Lite Worldwide sales: Total barrel sales of 44 million for ’97, 22 percent share of the U.S. market

Est. promo spending: $150 to $200 million

Ad spending (Miller Brewing total): $110 million Jan.-July ’98; $254 million for ’97

Promotion strategy: Be so offbeat that you impress sophomoric 24-year-old guys – and 44-year-old guys that still think they’re 24.

“We see promotions as the last five seconds of marketing,” says spokesman Scott Bussen. “We want to give consumers an incentive to purchase the brand, and remind them at the point of purchase what Miller Lite means to them.”

Tactics: Miller’s got four favorites: Thematic P-O-P tied to season or activity; sweepstakes with on- and off-premise components; on-premise games; and self-liquidating offers like inflatable chairs.

Miller’s forte is offbeat sweepstakes with one-of-a-kind prizes.

’98 highlights: Super Bowl. Miller Lite’s Cheerleader contest gave regular fans a shot at going to the big game. That has evolved (degenerated?) into the Really, Really Good Football Team sweeps this season, a mail-in deal that sends 50 winners and their friends to the Super Bowl.

The Dick Vitale talking can. Who else could announce “You’ve won, baby!” with such gusto? The instant-win captured attention amidst the clutter of March Madness promos.

Miller’s big summer push was the scratch-n-sniff instant-win that matched more than 1 million prizes with scents. Smell sunscreen, win a trip.

Sister brand MGD wowed trendsetters with the aspirational Miller Blind Date, secretly booking hot bands in clubby venues and surprising invitation-only crowds when the mystery bands took the stage. Of course, Miller Lite’s equivalent is Cheesy Listening, a version of Name that Tune using crappy ’70s songs and giving Velveeta and Lee Press-on Nails for prizes. So much for family resemblance.

Where it goes from here: Another round, barkeep. Watch for more Vitale, more NASCAR and NFL, more Rusty Wallace, and more bar games. “Our calendar works well for us,” Bussen shrugs.

Biggest marketing advantages: Ingenuity. Miller’s good at giving consumers – and retailers – something no one else can, whether it’s a stint as photographer’s assistant on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot, or Dick Vitale in a Can.

Lite ads really differentiate the brand, and Miller’s culture lets its promotion and ad agencies work in partnership – no elbowing at the conference table. “Everyone’s part of a marketing cabinet, with fair exchange of thought,” says an agency exec.

Biggest marketing disadvantages: Price remains a big factor in the segment, and Miller has been criticized for discounting too deeply. Still, its strong creative has helped temper retailers’ penchant for price deals by building consumer pull.

Lead promotion agencies: Zipatoni, St. Louis; GMR Marketing, New Berlin, WI.

Huh? Legend has it that when Jack MacDonough was named chairman at Miller, he walked across the street to Harley-Davidson headquarters and introduced himself to president Richard Teerlink, saying, “We should do something together.” Miller sponsored Harley’s 95th Anniversary event this summer. -Betwy Spethmann

Target Stores U.S. sales: $20.4 billion for ’97 (up 14%, from 796 stores)

Est. promo spending: $75 million to $100 million

Ad spending: $110 million for Jan.-July ’98; $193 million for ’97

Promotion strategy: The internal mantra is “Fast, fun, and friendly.” The cornerstone of promotion is cause marketing, with local community involvement. The merchandising rule is great style at good prices.

Tactics: A charge-card rebate program donates 1 percent of purchases to schools. Holiday promos and merchandising use a mix of proprietary and licensed properties. Celebrity tie-ins include charity drives and exclusive merchandise, like Katya perfume, named for skater Ekaterina Gordeeva, and Target-only CDs from singer Amy Grant.

’98 highlights: Target Stores has institutionalized Minnesota Nice. Parent Dayton-Hudson Corp. gives 5 percent of taxable income to nonprofits, more than any other retailer; grants totaled $46 million last year. That philanthropic gene got out of hand in recent years, though, and donations were scattered across too many causes. Target now focuses on education, family, and the arts, key interests of its core shopper, families with school-aged kids.

Target won international acclaim this year for its School Fundraising Made Simple campaign. Shoppers charge purchases to their Target Guest Card credit card and 1 percent is donated to the school of their choice. Target signed up some 78,000 schools in its 1/2rst year, 68 percent of all schools in its markets. It also signed up 20 percent more cardholders, who spend four times more than Target’s average shopper.

Target also developed an intriguing overlay for the fundraising program: school voicemail. In a five-market test, schools that registered to get cardholder donations could also get a free voicemail system for parents and teachers, called Target School Connection. Each teacher had a 24-hour-a-day mailbox to give out homework assignments and get parents’ messages; general mailboxes gave info on sports, lunch menus, school holidays and the like. More than 1,800 schools serving 1 million kids signed up during the test.

Holiday campaigns anchor Target’s promotion calendar with massive P-O-P, special merchandise, and charity overlays for Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. “Target can take a property and leverage it like no one else,” an agency source says. Target’s own character Snowden returns this Christmas with another TV special, gobs of merchandise, and two new friends: Raggedy Ann and Andy, spiffed up with new colors to fit Target’s stylish aisles. The Hand in Hand through the Holidays campaign could help cement Snowden as a legitimate entertainment property.

Where it goes from here: East. Target continues to add stores in the Northeast, opening its first storesin New Jersey this year. The chain has marketed aggressively to introduce its brand name in the region, and will keep building until it saturates the region. Now that the chain is fully national, watch for a stepped-up presence in broadcast, but continued focus on local causes. Target is also trying smaller, multi-floor stores in urban locales too small for its sprawling suburban-store format.

Biggest marketing advantage: Attitude. Target has made mass-merchandise stylish, and made style truly a mass proposition, cutting across all demographics. “It’s more than having their finger on the pulse. They are the pulse,” says a source close to the company.

That attitude permeates corporate culture, where staffers have this sense of being on stage. They’re not looking over their shoulders at Wal-Mart; they just plow ahead being Target.

Target’s touch makes minor celebrities bigger than they would be on their own. Witness Grant; Gordeeva;

CART driver Chip Ganassi; skating impresario Scott Hamilton. Each brings a freshness to Target, and Target heightens their credibility.

Biggest marketing disadvantage: Wal-Mart’s buying clout and distribution network. Target’s end-run is to emphasize its private-label brands and act classier than Wal-Mart.

Lead promotion agencies: Frankel & Co., Chicago; Fame, Minneapolis, a division of Target’s ad agency Martin/Williams.

Huh? Target didn’t replace vp-marketing Bob Thacker, who left for Sears in January. But exec vp-marketing John Pellegrene is a deft hand at branding, and Target’s three creative directors, who oversee all promotion campaigns, now report directly to him. – Betsy Spethmann

Visa Worldwide sales: $431.8 billion charged on Visa cards in ’97

Est. promo spending: $80 million

Ad spending: $120 million for ’98

Promotion strategy: Offer added value to increase card use and play up Visa’s ubiquity and drive awareness of Visa Check Card, which immediately subtracts purchases from a checking account.

Tactics: National sweepstakes; sports and events sponsorship; merchant and member-bank offers. Visa has “a full calendar of promo activities that can be used by merchants and member banks to promote the card,” says vp-marketing services Bob Pifke. Those 3.5 million merchants that accept Visa can be a powerful promotion network.

’98 highlights: Magic Moments, a $20 million holiday sweepstakes. Every week Visa chooses one second as its “magic moment,” and all purchases recorded that second are free. Bank participation is up 85 percent, and merchant support up 69 percent over last year. Member banks support the campaign with 90 million card statement inserts; merchants display 1.3 million pieces of P-O-P.

Where it goes from here: Online, with a newspaper campaign touting Visa for online purchases and $25 million in e-commerce promotions next year – about 10 percent of its total ad budget. Visa’ betting that e-commerce will explode in the next two years, so it’s branding itself as a big Internet marketer, says Lee Spirer, a principal at consultancy Booz-Allen & Hamilton, New York City.

Biggest marketing advantage: Ubiquity. That and a charge rate that’s double its nearest competitor’s.

Biggest marketing disadvantage: No database. Visa’s member banks hold the names and addresses of cardholders. Discover and American Express both have direct access to their cardholders. Visa’s system is cumbersome, forcing the company to work harder to get bank support to make promotions successful, Pifke says. Still, he adds, “When it happens, we get stronger results than we otherwise would have.”

Lead agencies: Frankel & Co., Chicago; Highway One, San Francisco; Carlson & Co, Minneapolis.

Huh? Visa gains interest when MasterCard and AmEx change tack. “Historically, their constant changing of ad campaigns and inconsistent promo approaches have worked to our advantage,” Pifke says. – Richard Sale

Pepsi-Cola Worldwide sales: $7.6 billion through third-quarter ’98; $10.5 billion for ’97

Est. promo spending: $200 million

Ad spending (for brand Pepsi): $75 million for Jan.-July ’98; $126 million for ’97

Promotion strategy: Phil Marineau, president-ceo of Pepsi-Cola North Amer ica, orchestrates a new emphasis on local and account-specific marketing under the umbrella of parent PepsiCo’s Power of One strategy. That means more marketing synergies for Pepsi and its siblings Frito-Lay and Tropicana, which PepsiCo bought from Seagram Co. this year. Team cola with salty snacks and you’re driving retailers traffic and high-margin sales at the same time.

Tactics: Sampling; continuity programs; game-based sweepstakes; Internet, entertainment tie-ins; events.

’98 highlights: Pepsi One, not Pop Culture.

The $100 million intro of diet cola One eclipsed other marketing activities this year, with a massive sampling effort including giveaways at Wal-Mart, 7-Eleven, and Pizza Hut, and free six-packs shipped to the homes of heavy cola drinkers. Secondary displays including 11,000 endcaps with multiple package forms beckoned in retail stores from coast to coast.

“They are doing what they need to do. The product has to be judged in the court of consumer taste through sampling and trial,” says Ken Harris, principal of Cannondale Associates, Wilton, CT.

Pepsi One targets men, so Pepsi is courting them with Pepsi Lounge events in malls owned by marketing partner Simon DeBartolo Group. It remains to be seen whether One will cannibalize Diet Pepsi, or confuse customers enough to send them running for a diet Coke.

The p.r.-heavy launch overshadowed Pepsi’s 100th Anniversary sampling events, and helped erase the memory of the summer’s Pop Culture sweepstakes, which proved that consumers would rather collect Stuff than bits of cultural catchphrases.

Pepsi and Frito-Lay companies merged information systems, setting the groundwork for closer ties. And their four-year-old Halloween House Party was extended this year to run up to the Super Bowl, with Pepsi and Frito-Lay sharing space on a $1 coupon good on purchase of both brands.

Taking a cue from the Coca-Cola Enterprise bottling system, Pepsi created the Pepsi Cola Bottling Co. of North America, a step toward greater control over bottling – crucial for executing promotions. Pepsi will spin off the capital-intensive, low-margin bottling business into a separate company and keep a sizable stake.

Where it goes from here: Older. Marineau is expected to dump GeneratioNext after telling analysts in April that the tagline is too narrowly focused on the young, and excludes older consumers.

Pepsi’s global deal with Lucasfilm for its Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace prequel in May could be a good starting point to broaden Pepsi’s pitch to a wider audience.

Biggest marketing advantage: Parentage. Few brands benefit from the kind of backing that PepsiCo can give Pepsi, especially in tandem with Frito-Lay. Now that Tropicana’s in the fold, the synergy in marketing and distribution looms even larger. Pepsi’s plan to coordinate product divisions for marketing makes it a formidable partner for retailers in a consolidating supermarket industry.

Biggest marketing disadvantages: Under-investment in the beverage business, a flaw that PepsiCo chairman Roger Enrico has pledged to rectify.

A fuzzy brand image as Pepsi tries to migrate to a broader audience from its historical teen target.

Lead promo agency: TLP, Inc., Dallas.

Huh? Overzealous school officials in Georgia suspended a student for wearing a Pepsi T-shirt on Coke in Education Day. Guess they wanted everyone in red for the class picture. – David Vaczek

Revlon Sales: $1.6 billion for Jan.-Sept. ’98; $2.4 billion for ’97

Est. promo spending: $25 million to $50 million

Ad spending: $103.6 million in ’97; $69.9 million in first half of ’98

Promotion strategy: Play up celebrity cachet using Revlon’s stable of spokesmodels. Leverage print ad buys through promos developed by publishers, such as reader expos and contests.

Tactics: Sweepstakes, including a watch-and-win game with NBC; direct-mail sampling; heavy FSI distribution; cause marketing; sponsorship of the Academy Awards.

’98 highlights: Revlon made a cameo appearance on four NBC shows during premiere week. The Colors to Watch sweepstakes dressed stars of Just Shoot Me, Caroline in the City, Frasier, and Suddenly Susan in colors from Revlon’s fall palette. Viewers matched the star with the color and mailed in their entries to win a Cadillac Catera (in Revlon Brazenberry, no less), or a walk-on role on one of the shows.

Revlon spent $30 million to launch MoistureStay makeup line, its biggest effort since the 1994 intro of ColorStay. It pumped new SKUs and colors into its ColorStay franchise, and popped new shades for nail color, lipsticks, and lip-moisturizer products.

Revlon’s Almay brand was one of several participating in Self magazine’s retail promotions supporting the launch of Self’s Better Body Book.

As part of its sponsorship of the Academy Awards, Revlon provided gift bags and makeovers for the bleacher fans, and helped stock gift baskets given to award presenters.

Revlon continued its high-profile in community service events, in particular its sponsoring of fund raising for breast cancer research.

Where it goes from here: Watch for more local efforts, driven by magazine events such as clinics and beauty expos. Revlon leads the cosmetics category in media-driven promotions, using its ad-buying clout to persuade magazines to pony up with promotional add-ons. Such face-to-face interactions with consumers would complement broad national advertising.

Biggest marketing advantage: A strict diet of fashion positioning, in a wide range of flavors. Revlon blends aspiration and mass appeal by using a wide diversity of models. Those spread ads give every woman reader someone to relate to. Revlon is the first major cosmetics company to sign a p