Co-branding or partnering between food firms takes on a new dimension with an alliance between Tyson Foods and the Jolly Green Giant.
Companies increasingly have tapped into other brands, usually those well-accepted by consumers, to launch new items or to jump-start existing products.
Co-branding has included Healthy Choice cereal marketed by Kellogg; a General Mills cereal with Reese’s peanut butter cups; Pillsbury Co. and Nabisco hooking up for a line of low-fat baking mixes under the SnackWell banner; and peanut butter and jelly sandwich cookies under the Skippy and Welch’s names.
“Co-branding stretches the dollar further and makes two plus two equal five,” Ron Cox, group VP-Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. and chairman of the Association of National Advertisers, once said.
Tyson, a Springdale, Ark.-based company, will be on the market nationally at retail by mid-September with a line of frozen, ready-to-eat chicken and beef items to be used with Green Giant’s meal-starters under the “Create a Meal!” banner.
This is a pretty shrewd move, because Green Giant is the dominant brand in so-called meal-starters, selling perhaps 70 percent of that niche category.
A big plus for Tyson and Green Giant is that the front packaging of the Tyson line bears a tiny panel with a replica of the Create a Meal! package.
In other words, one package is selling the other at point of purchase, thus reinforcing the co-branding venture.
“We think this is very significant and important for both sides,” says Jeff Sandore, VP-retail marketing for Tyson.
Both sides won’t say so, but there’s a good chance that packaging of Green Giant’s line eventually will display Tyson’s new products, which include chicken breast and seasoned beef strips.
Green Giant, a division of Minneapolis, Minn.-based Pillsbury, and Tyson are looking into co-promotional opportunities to maximize the impact of this new line.
Information Resources Inc. reports Create a Meal! was up 18 percent to $103 million for a recent 52-week period.
Observers believe that this new frozen chicken-and-beef line from Tyson can be as much as a $40 million business at retail in its first 12 months of distribution; perhaps a $100 million business within three years. And that’s a lot of beef and chicken that Tyson won’t mind crowing about.
Frankel boosts Urevig: Liane Adduci Urevig was promoted to VP-corporate communications from director, public relations, at Frankel & Co., the Chicago-based marketing and promotion agency. Other news: Navistar International Corp. and Y&R Chicago, its agency since 1984, split on what’s now a $2 million-plus account. . . Blue Chip Casino in Michigan City, Ind., picked Keroff & Rosenberg Advertising, which once had Empress Casino in Joliet as a client. . . Bob Porcaro, Andy Shore and Rita Brumlik, all client media directors at Foote, Cone & Belding Chicago, were named VPs.
The “hat trick” in goofs: As corporate America returns from the summer playground to the harsh realities of getting down to business, managements might want to consider placing around their offices a simple card with the “Think” message on it. Veterans may well remember “Think” as one of IBM’s credos. Yes, “think,” like tapping the brain and doing enough research to avoid a potential public-relations disaster, if not an embarrassing corporate episode. First there was Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s ill-advised e-mail message about trying to lure Montgomery Ward executives to jump ship. That was followed by the American Medical Association working out a deal to give Sunbeam Corp.’s consumer products the AMA seal of approval in exchange for royalty payments, another gaffe that led to plenty of flak. And now the Illinois Lottery has canceled within 24 hours an ad campaign promoting its Big Game jackpot. These TV commercials reminded the citizenry of the infamous O.J. Simpson-Ford Bronco police chase, stirring a furor. The plug was pulled on TV spots created by Foote, Cone & Belding Chicago that may have run up something in the $200,000-to-$300,000 range in production and media costs. Apparently, little research was done beforehand on how this TV campaign would play. Lottery and FCB officials would have been smarter to have pulled the campaign off the air temporarily, done additional research on what the problems were, and then maybe scrap it entirely if the findings were totally negative. Calling all brains to Springfield and FCB’s offices at 101 E. Erie: Make sure you bring along a placard bearing the word “Think.”
Strictly Personal: Birthday greetings to David N. Rothschild, 38; Joe O’Neil, 41 (Chicago Bulls); Tom Davidson, 60 (Good Housekeeping); Nancy O’Brien Widelka, 34; Rick Bollinger, 46; Norman F. Kerr Jr., 43; Susan T. Gayford, 46; Brian K. Gosizk, 40; Sheryl A. O’Brien, 35; and Allison Byczynski, 29.
