CHOCK FULL O' NUTS SEEKS RETAILER TIE-INS

RICHARD TURCSIK

NEW YORK -- Chock full o' Nuts Corp. here is looking to add retailer tie-ins as the next step in a successful new radio advertising campaign for its well-known coffee. The brand marketer switched from television to radio advertising in January. The move resulted in a 10.5% sales boost in the 21 markets where the spots aired. The commercials offer a perked-up and more contemporary version of the company's famous "Chock full o' Nuts is that heavenly coffee" jingle.

"For the launch of this campaign, we did not do trade tie-ins because we really wanted to establish ourselves with our new advertising campaign," said Andrea Bass, Chock full o' Nuts director of marketing. "But we will be considering [trade tie-ins] in the future."

Retailers have been pleased with the results of the campaign so far, she added. "I've been on calls where we played the radio commercials with stations that were in the market, and [retailers] were genuinely excited. They feel it is their shoppers and they are involved with Chock full o' Nuts. It is more likely that they are going to pick us up and they want to do displays for us," she said.

Bass, along with executives of Chock's advertising agency, Lord, Dentsu & Partners here, explained the campaign to an audience of radio advertising officials at a meeting of the New York Market Radio Broadcasters Association last month. Larry Orell, executive vice president and U.S. media director at the ad agency, said radio has proven to be an effective medium for a mid-sized company, like Chock full o' Nuts, which has a 16% market share, and competes against Procter & Gamble's Folgers and Kraft Foods' Maxwell House brands -- both TV mainstays.

"The coffee category, in a Pavlovian way, uses TV. Last fall the TV market just went crazy, and the price hikes trickled down into the spot market, and really made us consider advertising in vehicles other than TV," he said.

"With radio, we could actually carve out a competitive presence, particularly on the local level. Radio is only a fraction of the cost of television. We took the money that was originally allocated for production and reinvested it in media. So we got more bang for the buck," he said.

To create interactiveness among listeners, Chock full o' Nuts developed a promotional program that awarded coffee, mugs and a Farberware percolator to lucky listeners who could correctly sing the jingle.