FROZEN BRANDS MAKE TIE-IN PUSH

RUSSELL REDMAN

Healthy Choice and Stouffer's Lean Cuisine, two of the leading health-oriented frozen dinner/entree brands, are generating supermarket tie-ins with aggressive national marketing campaigns this fall.

This month, Healthy Choice released a five-page newspaper insert containing $4 in reduced- and multiple-price coupons on its full grocery line. The insert is expected to reach 50 million people, said spokeswoman Emily-Jane Powell.

Supermarkets are being encouraged to support the insert with product displays and consumer advertising, Powell noted. "[We] are providing retailers with in-store merchandising and display opportunities," she said. Frozen products from Healthy Choice, a brand of ConAgra, Omaha, Neb., include dinners, entrees, premium low-fat ice cream, a low-fat breakfast sausage and Hearty Handfuls sandwiches, which were introduced last month. Late last month in Washington, the brand sponsored the Healthy Choice American Heart Walk, a national fund-raiser by the American Heart Association. More than 800 community walks followed the event.

Healthy Choice provided supermarkets with ad slicks featuring the event's logo, AHA donation slips and tear pads of offer forms for the Healthy Choice/AHA 1996 calendar, which has $25 in Healthy Choice coupons.

Stouffer's kicked off its campaign late last month, running a freestanding insert containing coupons and broadcast spots to promote new items. It also has received heavy ad support from supermarkets. Chains nationwide have advertised Lean Cuisine meals at 30% to 50% off or at multiple pricing.

"We have begun a new ad campaign, so we have lots of TV, radio and print advertising going on right now," said Roz O'Hearn, public affairs director for Nestle Frozen, Refrigerated and Ice Cream Cos., Solon, Ohio, which makes Stouffer's.

"We have just started to advertise some line extensions to the Lean Cuisine Cafe Classics and Homestyle product lines. We also have the Lean Cuisine Hearty Portions line in 50% of the country, and there's a lot of advertising behind that," O'Hearn said.

New Lean Cuisine items include Homestyle baked fish with pasta shells and country vegetables and beef as well as, under the Cafe Classics line, mesquite beef, glazed turkey tenderloins with sweet potatoes, grilled fish with vegetables, chicken parmesan, chicken breast in wine sauce and honey mustard chicken. The TV and radio campaign, "Taste Bud Temptations," promotes Lean Cuisine's taste while the print ads highlight specific items, O'Hearn said.