May 25, 2006 A Station With a One-of-a-Kind Campaign: All Snapple, All the Time By STUART ELLIOTT NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/business/media/25adco.html?pagewanted=print SOME radio stations promise listeners "all hits, all the time." Others proclaim to be "all news, all the time." For the next 40 days a station in Boston will be, when it comes to advertising, all Snapple, all the time. Beginning tomorrow, the Snapple line of teas, juice drinks, waters and other beverages sold by Cadbury Schweppes will be the sole sponsor of all programming and promotions on WFNX, a Boston FM station that also broadcasts through affiliates into Maine and New Hampshire. The sponsorship, which is costing Snapple more than $2 million, will enable the three stations that compose the WFNX Radio Network to eliminate all conventional commercials from the Memorial Day weekend through the Fourth of July. In place of traditional spots, D.J.'s will acknowledge Snapple on the air for its sponsorship of what is being called the "Summer Free for All." Among the citations that listeners may hear is a declaration that WFNX is the station "playing the best stuff on earth," a nod to the longtime Snapple slogan. There will be sound effects mixed in with the D.J. patter, like the "whoosh" a Snapple cap makes when it is twisted off a bottle. The D.J.'s on WFNX and its affiliates WFEX-FM in Manchester, N.H., and WPHX-FM in Portsmouth, N.H. will also identify the Snapple brand as the benefactor behind an array of promotions. They are to include free concerts by bands like Dashboard Confessional, giveaways of merchandise and beverages by teams of Snapple employees who will visit area beaches, and events with retailers that sell Snapple products. A "guitarmeter" will be placed outside a convenience store at Copley Square in Boston, signaling distribution of free drinks to passers-by on days when the temperature at noon tops 85 degrees. Although the centerpiece of the effort is radio, one of the oldest media, large parts of the campaign will be made available through new media the better to reach the intended target audience of consumers aged 18 to 39. The plans, developed with three agencies, call for elements like a special Web site, reachable through a link on the WFNX home page (fnxradio.com); downloadable music, ring tones and voice tones; and text messaging. "Consumers are in control, deciding how, when and where they will receive your messages," said Holly Mensch, marketing vice president for the Snapple brand at Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages in Rye Brook, N.Y., a unit of Cadbury Schweppes. "It's getting harder and harder to reach people through traditional media avenues." "So if you want to break through," Ms. Mensch said, "you have to connect in a way that fits with their lifestyles, in a way they can't tune you out." Snapple has long been active in the realm of nontraditional marketing, dating to the days when its employee-cum-spokeswoman, Wendy Kaufman (a k a Wendy the Snapple Lady), became a roving brand ambassador. Recent initiatives include the sponsorship of the Snapple Theater Center in Midtown Manhattan, at 1627 Broadway at 50th Street. Such initiatives offer marketers "a high level of presence, but also deliver something to the consumer," said Jay Coleman, president at EMCI in New York, an agency that works on projects for Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages. "The concept is to weave Snapple through the fabric of WFNX," he added, "in a way that fits the personality of the station and the brand." The sponsorship was the brainchild of Mr. Coleman, who called it "brandcasting" and described it as "something I've been looking to pull off for a very long time." His inspiration, Mr. Coleman said, was a New York radio station, WAPP-FM, which introduced a format change by going commercial-free for the summer of 1982. WFNX, owned by the Phoenix Media/Communications Group, was selected for the sponsorship for several reasons, Mr. Coleman said. Its format of so-called alternative rock music is attractive to the youthful Snapple target market, he said, adding that Boston is an important market for Snapple, which already advertises on WFNX. Then, too, a marketer like Snapple with a reputation for cheeky campaigns could hardly resist an offbeat pitch for teas in the city known for the nation's most revolutionary tea party. In fact, one reason the sponsorship is timed for the start of summer is to help promote a new product line called Snapple White Tea. WFNX was also seeking a big idea for summer, said Andy Kingston, general manager at the WFNX Radio Networks division of Phoenix Media/Communications, to help publicize the doubling of the power of the station's signal after the relocation of its broadcast tower to Boston from Medford, Mass. "One of most powerful things a radio station can do is go commercial-free," Mr. Kingston said. "We were approached by Jay, originally with the idea of going commercial-free for a year. Obviously, that was something we couldn't consider. But we ultimately agreed on this approach, which we found very appealing." Mr. Kingston acknowledged that limiting the station's air time to a sole marketer was a risk because it could alienate other advertisers. "But we talked to them about it in January, to give them plenty of lead time," he said, "and told them, 'Afterward, you'll be advertising to a much larger audience.' " Some other WFNX advertisers will take part in the Snapple sponsorship, Mr. Kingston said, like Live Nation, a concert and event promoter, which "will give us a lot of tickets that we can give away at Snapple events." Other media properties owned by Phoenix Media/Communications will help promote the sponsorship, he added, including The Boston Phoenix newspaper. In addition to EMCI, two other outside agencies are working on the sponsorship. One is G8wave, a division of Phoenix Media/Communications that specializes in mobile marketing. "Listeners can text-message from and get content downloads to their phones," said Brad Mindich, chairman of G8wave and executive vice president at Phoenix Media/Communications (and son of Stephen Mindich, chief executive.) "It fits in with the demographic for WFNX and Snapple." The other agency is Rainmaker Media in Westport, Conn., led by Beau Phillips, a radio programming consultant. Mr. Kingston said that Mr. Phillips would work with Max Tolkoff, the operations manager and program director of WFNX, to make sure that the on-air references to Snapple are "nonintrusive" and do not sound like commercials. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list medianews@twiar.org To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
