candy

Brandweek, April 24, 2000 by Mike Beirne

HOT BUTTONS

Kids are king, but adults need to eat more candy

OVERALL

Spending up

DARK HORSE

Small manufacturers link to big partners (licenses, retailers, entertainment) for more exposure

Candy is an impulse buy. So consumers are likely to grab sweets when paying for groceries at the checkout line rather than develop a craving for the confection aisle after watching a TV ad, right? Not if you're a kid. The 30-second ads for Topps' Ring Pop moved the sales needle every time it aired during a five-week run in several markets last year. This year Topps--convinced of the correlation between ads and tweens and teens slapping a couple of quarters on the store counter--is increasing ad spending for its hard candy roster.

After using Fran Drescher on 3 Musketeers' "Big on Chocolate, Not on Fat" campaign that won over diet-conscious women, Mars/M&M expanded the candy bar's appeal to kids younger than 10 years old. Last year, according to Competitive Media Reporting, the company rolled $5 million into the adventures of clay-animated Porthos, Athos and D'Artagnan, positioning the brand as a light snack for children. Sales in drug, grocery and mass outlets jumped 17 percent to $40.2 million for the year ended March 26, per scanner data from Information Resources Inc.

Pumping sales is an obvious excuse for bigger ad budgets, but there are other reasons. Just look at the Easter candy aisle at retail. A decade ago, seasonal categories including Halloween and Christmas belonged to small manufacturers of chocolate bunnies and Santa Claus. Now they've been pushed off the shelves by Snickers Eggs, Jolly Rancher Jelly Beans and Nestle's Disney-themed confections. With more than one-third of candy revenue connected to holiday sales, the small guys increasingly are looking at TV. For example, Just Born has been making marshmallow Peeps since 1953, but ran its first TV ad last year to maintain its perception as the leader among Easter candies. The Bethlehem, Pa., company also leveraged exposure for the Mike and Ike and Hot Tamales brands through a music sweeps tie-in with Atlantic Records last year, which included an MTV ad. A Nascar "Winner's Choice" promo launches this month with TV advertising on MTV and during Nascar events. Plus, there's the Zours sour candy sampling with cere al giant General Mills that includes a 10-second mention on Trix commercials.

"We get a lot of people approaching us for sampling opportunities and you've got to ask yourself how many impressions am I getting at the end of the day?" said Kevin Riveroll, product manager. "If we can get TV, you can't pass that up."

Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and even Radio Disney provide targeted access to the motherlode of young consumers that is more affordable than network TV. But not all candy marketing is aimed at slots when Pokemon or Beast Machines are on. Hershey, Warner-Lambert (with Trident) and others exploit daytime and late-night programming. Sure, there's the campaign to win gatekeeper moms, but another demographic at stake here is adults whose candy consumption is below the coveted 12- to 17-year-old consumers. Adults represent a growth opportunity, particularly with a population bulge coming among the 50-and-older segment. Wrigley is tapping that strategy with Eclipse, a baby boomer gum that claims to eliminate mouth odor.

Not everyone is running to traditional mass media. Life Savers built its candystand.com with promos and proprietary games that keep visitors coming back and recast the Nabisco unit as a division with hip, young-skewing brands. Nestle recently named ecandy.com as its exclusive distributor to online shoppers and said it was looking to establish partners with other Internet destination sites that likely will link to ecandy.

Mars/M&M, the king of media spending with $213.6 million last year, attempts to go anti-media, at least with regard to TV, with an under-the-radar campaign targeting Gen X that repositions Milky Way Dark as Milky Way Midnight, a mysterious yet cool treat. The tagline, "Carpe Noctum," Latin for seize the night, appears on print, outdoor and transit advertising and on a nightlife-themed Internet site. Sampling will hit 300 nightclubs, bars and lounges, culminating in Midnight Madness, a four-city simultaneous Webcast of eight alternative-music bands.