Big-Budget Campaigns to Beef Up Meat Ads

There isn’t a heck of a lot you can say about a kosher salami. Or, for that matter, about a can of Spam.

Of course, that’s never stopped Madison Avenue from trying. And now--with the lure of flashy prizes and the use of offbeat advertising campaigns--producers of the two slow-growth meat products are trying to bring health-conscious consumers back into the fold.

Names like Spam and Hebrew National salami may not send creative shivers down the spines of ad whizzes. But any way you slice it, the makers of these products have to get an “E” for their recent ad efforts.

Hebrew National is waving an $83,000 check at anyone who can make its 83% fat-free kosher salami sound interesting. It will award the prize to the person, be it an ad executive or a cab driver, who creates a campaign that best places its salami in a nutritional light--at a par, say, with wheat germ. You see, National Foods Inc., the Bronx-based maker of the salami, wants to give the cottage cheese and yogurt makers of the world a run for the lunch money.

“There are world issues that are probably more important than how much fat is in your kosher salami,” said Jim Dixon, vice president for marketing at National Foods, “but to us, it’s very important.” So important, in fact, that the company is spending nearly $2 million on what is essentially an ad campaign for an ad campaign.

Not to be outdone, the makers of Spam have also taken the offensive with a sweepstakes of their own.

Spam, after all, turns 50 this year. To celebrate, its manufacturer, Geo. A. Hormel & Co., plans to host a whopper of a July 4 weekend cookout in its hometown of Austin, Minn. The expected highlight is a Spam-O-Rama recipe contest, as a result of which Spam will be as likely to show up inside a pie shell as it is between two halves of a bagel.

Spamtastic, huh? Maybe. But executives realize that a Spam cookout probably won’t get much national ink. So, to drum up interest in its new Spam--with 25% less salt--it is sponsoring a sweepstakes that will send six couples to celebrate Spam’s birthday in Hawaii.

Sort of a Spam luau.

Winners, of course, may opt for a $3,000 cash prize instead. That’ll buy about 1,300 cans of Spam, give or take a hundred. “It’s difficult getting new users to try Spam,” admitted Richard Crane, group product marketing manager for Spam. “But believe it or not, we’re consumed in 27% of the households in the U.S.”

The company’s growth, however, has slowed to a trickle. That is why Spam is turning to a contest for which it expects to receive perhaps 5 million entries.

Ad industry executives, however, offer mixed reviews on the use of sweepstakes and prizes for the likes of salami and Spam. “Contests of this type are really tangential to the benefits of the products,” said Jack Roth, president of Los Angeles-based Admarketing. “So the effect is temporary, at best.”

Still, some folks swear by contests, and Tom Burr, chairman of Abert, Newhoff & Burr Inc., says his agency has been involved in creating contests for client Yamaha that have had bang-up results. “It still mystifies me why these things work,” Burr said, “because I find it hard to identify with people who fill out coupons and send them in.”

Of course, the Hebrew National salami contest requires more than filling out coupons. It requires creating an ad campaign. The response so far? Well, the print ad--which recently appeared in the Sunday magazines of the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Boston Globe--specified in bold print that no phone calls would be accepted. But so, far, Dixon said, “We’ve had to bring three people aboard to handle the phone calls.”

JWT Plans Cutbacks in ‘Non-Creative’ Areas

To some investors it may seem long overdue, but JWT Group, parent of the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, has big plans in the works to cut spending.

Within the next six months, the agency plans a major housecleaning--primarily at its operations outside the United States, said Bertram Metter, chairman of J. Walter Thompson USA, the domestic advertising subsidiary of JWT Group. Although he would not disclose any specific proposed cuts, he did not rule out the possibility of shutting down some foreign operations.

“It’s like the U.S. Army or the U.S. Postal Service, or any big company with a lot of costs,” Metter said. “You have to decide which things you want to spend less on.”

The cutbacks--which will also affect U.S. operations--will be phased in slowly, he said. “Money has been going into too many non-creative things,” he continued. “We want to get rid of any peripheral stuff that doesn’t result in better advertising for our clients.”

Two weeks ago--shortly after reporting a $4.9-million fourth-quarter loss--the embattled agency ran a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that detailed its continued high rankings in the industry as a creative shop. “We hoped the ad would help refocus attention on what really counts--the high quality of our ads,” Metter said.

He insisted that an agency’s financial headaches can be ironed out a lot faster than creative problems. “You can find good financial people in two weeks,” he said, “but a good creative group takes years to bring together.”

British-Based Agency Going After Uncle Sam

Will Uncle Sam give Saatchi & Saatchi the business?

So far, the answer has mostly been no. The British-based ad giant Saatchi & Saatchi Co. has picked up little business from the U.S. government and its many agencies. That’s why Ed Wax, president of Saatchi & Saatchi Compton Inc., an American division of the firm, recently visited Washington to lobby for even a smidgen of the government’s multimillion-dollar ad budget.

Wax said he wasn’t particular about what federal ad account his agency lands. “It really doesn’t matter,” he said, “but we’ve got to start somewhere.”

Pepsi Looking Beyond the Jackson Generation

Executives at Pepsico are getting tired of Michael Jackson’s song and dance.

In fact, they are no longer even counting on Jackson--whom they are paying $10 million during the next three years--to be the focus of their 1987 ad campaign.

Jackson hasn’t been told to beat it. In fact, he has already filmed two Pepsi commercials, with a possible third on the way. But last week the company announced that it has signed rock stars David Bowie and Tina Turner for undisclosed amounts to appear in a commercial planned for later this year.

The problem is timing. Pepsi wants its Jackson campaign to ride on the coattails of publicity that the rock star’s new album is expected to garner. But Jackson, who is already late in releasing the album, has pushed the tentative release date back to July. And Pepsi executives aren’t even counting on that. “We don’t need him to fulfill our marketing plans this year,” said Roger A. Enrico, the company’s president and chief executive.

Still, Pepsi hopes to make the most out of Jackson’s eventual public re-emergence. Although just two commercials were scheduled--one about a fan who sneaks backstage and another about Jackson being chased by adoring fans--a third one may be added, Enrico said.

“We shot some concert footage of Michael with a hand-held camera,” he said, “and it turned out so good that we may make it into a commercial without a story line.”

Latino Ads to Compete on Their Own for Clios

The Clio awards--which are to the advertising industry what the All-Star Game is to major league baseball--will have a new Latino twist this year. For the first time, U.S. Latino advertising will be judged separately from Anglo ads at the June 15 competition in New York.

Under the new rules, entries must be originally produced in Spanish for the Latino market. “The days of dubbing over an Anglo spot,” said Juan Waelder, creative director at Ferrer/Ad America Inc., “are coming to a close.”