DIAL TO EXPAND SPORT CARD PROMO

LISA A. TIBBITTS

ATLANTA -- The Major League Baseball season may be long over, but the impact of a baseball tie-in promotion run here by Dial soap may last all year and into the next.

Executives at Dial Corp., Phoenix, said the company is still processing responses from a late summer baseball card giveaway and sweepstakes in Atlanta and surrounding markets. Dial liked the results so well that it is formulating plans to expand the concept into a series of local market sports tie-in promotions for the coming year.

Dial is already planning market-specific tie-ins with the National Football League and with Major League Baseball in 1995 -- provided there is a baseball season next year -- said Phil Neri, senior vice president of field sales for Dial.

"Our field sales organization is going to be able to segment or fragment what teams they want to work with. We'll probably run a promotion in the Green Bay/ Minneapolis area for the Minnesota Vikings. In New York, it'll probably be the Giants," said Neri.

He said preliminary data indicate that the company's bar soap share jumped about 3 percentage points in the Atlanta market during the latest promotion. Dial received more than 35,000 mail-in responses

to the on-pack offer on six-bar packages of Dial soap, which offered consumers a free limited edition baseball card featuring Atlanta Braves' star David Justice.

Each response was also entered into a drawing to win tickets to 12 free luxury "sky box" seats for a game at the Atlanta Braves' stadium. The drawing was held before the baseball strike took place.

"The Atlanta Braves are a hot baseball team and David Justice is a high-profile player on the team. And that's what sold the promotion to our retailers," said Neri.

Gary Friedman, a Dial account executive in the Atlanta field office, created the promotion idea with the Atlanta market in mind. The promotion's scope was later broadened to include stores throughout Georgia and Florida.

In its final form, the promotion was retailer-specific in Atlanta-area Kroger supermarkets. Retailers in the other regional markets were permitted to participate on a nonexclusive basis.

Dial brought the promotion to life in supermarkets by helping to build product displays and distributing 650 life-sized cutouts of David Justice in the two-state area for use at points of sale. Retailers could later raffle off the cardboard figures to consumers.

Neri said the decision to promote the six-bar packs -- a fairly large size for supermarkets -- was based on the knowledge that competing mass merchandisers frequently feature a dry detergent or a soap in their Sunday circulars. Although the promotion was available to all trade channels, Neri said this event was particularly well-suited for supermarkets.

"We are trying to convince the grocery retailers that in order to gain the business back from the mass merchandisers, they have to promote the larger multipacks," he said.

Cincinnati-based Kroger ran newspaper advertisements in Atlanta featuring the six-bar packs at two for $7. The retailer also featured them on its KRGR in-store radio network that premiered early this summer. Some Kroger stores in Atlanta built displays containing as many as 250 cases of the product.

"Kroger helped promote our six-bar pack and, through marketing, we were able to tie-in with the in-store radio network, so we had all the combined efforts," said Neri.

Neri said retailers were very excited about the promotion. "It was good for them because it was a consumer event that moved traffic in their stores and the consumer was able to purchase product. It was a win-win for both the manufacturer and the retailer and that's what it's all about today," he explained.

"It's a better way to get a bang for our dollar, to get the consumer and the accounts excited," he said.