Putting the squeeze on viewers for 30 minutes: long-form Tropicana ad to appear on CBS stations, cable

Cable World, April 1, 2002 by Christopher Schultz

Finally, it's here: An orange juice ad that lasts 30 minutes.

Tropicana calls it Nu-TV--for "nutricious"--but the pun holds up: It's new, too, and it represents another foray into the graying territory between programming and advertising.

In the early evening, on Saturday, April 6, in 13 of CBS's 14 owned and operated markets nationwide, Tropicana will premiere Breakfast Americana, a 28-minute long-form commercial that will later air on cable, mostly during paid-programming blocks targeting female viewers.

The Danny Glover-narrated "documercial," as Tropicana calls it, will chronicle the juice maker's corporate history, as well as the history and nutritional advantages of oranges. (One historical tidbit: At the turn of the century, hard-to-get oranges were luxury items, exchanged as holiday gifts.)

According to Rick Petry, president and COO or Tyee Euro RSCG, the Portland, Ore., unit of Euro RSCG Worldwide that specializes in long-form advertising and created Breakfast Americana, Tropicana is the first packaged-goods company to venture into the long-form advertising arena, which is normally dominated by pharmaceutical companies and more traditional direct-response advertisers.

"It's a blending of entertainment, education and advertising," Petry says, which amounts to "a powerful message sponsored by the brand."

According to Petry, the appeal of the long-form commercial is twofold: first, a 30minute message is, amid advertising's increasing fragmentation, one way to break through the clutter. Second, it's a matter of "motivating consumer behavior in retail." Such a fleshed-out explanation of a brand and its products, if done effectively, can influence a consumer's decision when he or she visits a store. For these reasons, he thinks, cable will begin to see more such programs. Petry says that Breakfast Americana cost around $1 million to produce. (The low end of a half-hour infomercial's cost is $400,000, according to Petry, which, he says, compares favorably to the $325,000 average of 30-second spots.)

After the CBS premiere, Tropicana is dedicating 60% to 65% of its media budget to such cable networks as USA, Food Network, Bravo, TLC, Lifetime, Discovery and WE: Women's Entertainment. Although Breakfast Americana will reside mostly within paid-programming blocks, Pax TV is airing it at 7 p.m. on at least two Saturdays.

Sheila Dunbar, Pax TV's VP-long-form sales, says Pax liked the "family-friendly" aspect of Breakfast Americana and was not averse to putting it in the 7 p.m. slot. Pax runs paid programming often, and, Dunbar says, "When agencies can come up with an opportunity to purchase a nontraditional time period, it's of great interest to them, because it introduces them to a different audience."

Added to the 28 minutes of history and entertainment are two minutes of purer advertising: spots that feature a new 14-ounce, single-serve, refillable plastic Tropicana container, a product that has been available for six weeks.

Some don't buy that Breakfast Americana is anything more than an infomercial. "The lines have always been blurred between traditional [advertising] and infomercials," says Alison Behm, a partner in M/K Advertising Partners, a women-owned ad agency in New York that often works with cable. No matter its message, though, she says, "It makes sense to go on cable because it's niche programming."

To Lifetime's EVP-sales, Lynn Picard, Breakfast Americana is paid programming and won't run anywhere else on her network, she says, unless Lifetime finds it entertaining and able to be, as she says, "Lifetime-ized." Lifetime has run long-form educational shows in the past, such as a special on Lyme disease when the tick-borne illness attracted the attention of fearful mothers.

Tyee's Petry is confident that the long form will catch on. Tyee produced advertisements for Bissell, the vacuum manufacturer. Highlighting certain vacuum cleaners, the ads drove consumers to Target, where Bissell's products are sold. The campaign spiked sales nationwide, according to Petry. Tyee also created two ads for Callaway Golf, which are currently airing on the Golf Channel. General Motors Corp. recently produced a long-form commercial, although not with Tyee.

Tropicana will measure sales results before, during and after the Breakfast Americana campaign, Petty says, and "The implications could be far-ranging if it's as successful as we think it's going to be."