TYSON MOVES TO RULE ROOST IN CHICKEN

RICHARD TURCSIK

SPRINGDALE, Ark. -- Tyson Foods here has unified its packaging and created a single ad campaign for its products in a "master branding" program designed to equate Tyson with chicken in the minds of consumers.

A new "Tyson. We're Chicken" campaign created by DDB Needham, Chicago, replaces the former "Tyson. Feeding you like family" and broke Jan. 24. Tyson will be spending 30% more on its ad budget this year than last year.

Tyson is promoting its new focus through TV commercials and a freestanding insert that dropped Feb. 18. It has teamed with Actmedia for promotion through Aisle Vision, Cart Vision and Actradio, as well as checkout couponing, in-store demonstrations and tie-ins with other national brands.

"After we did some research we found out that some people did not technically tie Tyson to chicken," Jeff Sandore, vice president of consumer marketing at Tyson, told Brand Marketing.

"We found many consumers associated us with chicken, but they did not identify us with chicken. Our objective with this campaign is to get consumers to say Tyson when they say chicken. We want to build brand equity and have Tyson stand for poultry in the consumer's eye in all forms, from frozen to refrigerated, processed to fresh," he explained.

"We did this to unify our product line and take advantage of our mass and scale of leverage in the poultry industry. We're trying to put an integrated effort behind our packaging. Rather than selling individual products we're trying to sell the Tyson brand. We're trying to drive the Tyson name and build equity around the Tyson franchise," Sandore said.

As part of its new image, Tyson introduced new packaging graphics that create a more visual and unifying look for the products.

"Our previous packaging was a very disjointed look. We are doing a master brand approach. This way all of our products will have a consistent look to them, with similar backgrounds and graphics. The treatment of the logo will be the same from package to package," he said, adding that the logo was only slightly modified for the new approach.

"We basically maintained the same logo," Sandore said, "because there is some equity in our Tyson trademark." He said that although Tyson also owns the Weaver brand of frozen and processed chicken products, that label will maintain its own identity.