POWER PARTNERING IS KEY AT NABISCO

RICHARD TURCSIK

NEW YORK -- Symbiotic promotions linking Nabisco and other manufacturers as "power partners" are proving successful in stores, according a Nabisco executive.

"With joint promotions you can build brand equity with endorsements, reinforce your positioning and leverage your media while building your own strengths and your partner's strengths," said Christine Franck, manager of integrated marketing for Nabisco Foods Group, Parsippany, N.J.

Franck spoke before an audience of marketing executives at the Contest, Games & Sweepstakes conference here sponsored by The Marketing Institute earlier this month.

She said Nabisco has used a wide variety of joint promotions with other leading consumer products companies, including Coca-Cola, Kraft cheese, Hormel chili, Progresso soups, CBS TV and Walt Disney Co. videotapes.

"Power partners has been a key area for us in the last two years," she said. "We're trying to find partners that can help us to leverage measurable results in an impactful way via media, brand usage, getting endorsements and adding to our distribution and sales as much as possible."

For a Disney promotion, Nabisco devoted the back panel of its Ritz crackers box to an offer for Disney's "Beauty and the Beast videotape. The program was supported with supermarket end-cap displays, Franck said.

"An advantage with our cracker brands is that we have a wonderful billboard and a wonderful opportunity to use full color," she said.

"Videos are very often purchased in the retail supermarket, and, therefore, you are helping your supermarket in terms of generating more retail sales."

Franck called Nabisco's sales force and its placement in category end-aisle displays "critical" in terms of meeting volume goals. "We're always trying to get a supplemental or second end-aisle display."

Nabisco used the back of Premium saltines boxes for two separate promotions involving Hormel chili and Progresso soups. In the Progresso promotion, the back panels of 30 million Premium boxes featured bowls of Progresso soups. Both promotions were successful at increasing sales of the promoted products, and building supermarket sales as a result.

"We concentrated in-store, with the package and then a shelf tag for Hormel."

The Progresso tie-in evolved into a "soup season" promotion that included a freestanding insert as well as the package itself, she added.

"In each one of these programs we supported it in-store with point-of-purchase radio, which put us in the direct path of the consumer and helped us to catch them in their environment, because they make their decisions about brands in the store," she said.