Buy Cialis

Title: YEAR IN REVIEW: PRODUCTS ,  Advertising Age, 00018899, 12/21/98, Vol. 69, Issue 51

DROOPING FEELING? NOT HERE

PRODUCTS: IMAC viagra TELETUBBIES DIAL AROUND `BRILL’S CONTENT’ MACH3 OLEAN COLGATE TOTAL TITANIC ST. JOHN’S WORT

viagra gets a gig on Leno, Letterman

Pfizer got a rise out of its breakthrough prescription impotence treatment, viagra . The product touched a cultural nerve. It became the source of countless jokes and the subject of governmental and insurance debates over who should pay for it. A reserved print ad campaign appeared in July. A companion $35 million TV effort from Cline, Davis & Mann, New York, will run in 1999. And Bob Dole joins as the pill’s new pitchman.

DIAL AROUND

Any questions about the importance and future of dial-around long-distance services were put to rest late in the year when AT&T Corp. released the Lucky Dog Phone Co. AT&T earlier had conceded it was losing $1 million a day in charges to the hundreds of dial-around providers led by MCI WorldCom, which started aggressively advertising its products in 1997.

TELETUBBIES

The British invasion of the ’90s was a band of four baby-talking, teddy bear-like creatures. They star in “Teletubbies,'’ the Public Broadcasting Service program created in the U.K. by Ragdoll Productions. The show first ran on the BBC and became a global property as international licensing and merchandising efforts were pursued. The Teletubbies also are omnipresent thanks to the explosion of licensed products from books and games to yogurt and videos.

TITANIC Unlike its namesake, the film “Titanic'’ refuses to go down. In spite of dire predictions the flick would sink under the weight of its $65 million production costs, it was a spectacular box-office success, grossing $600 million in the U.S. and more than $1.1 billion everywhere else. Director Jim Cameron was heralded a genius, the stars made audiences swoon and the soundtrack sold 12 million units. It attracted tie-ins galore, and its success is so epic it may be a coincidence that DreamWorks Pictures chose to launch “Prince of Egypt'’ on Dec. 19, the same date the film “Titanic'’ set sail.

COLGATE TOTAL

The buzz for Colgate Total started overseas as U.S. travelers purchased the item by the caseload-before Colgate-Palmolive Co. got approval to sell it in the U.S. Colgate projected a 6% market share in its home country for Total, and by November, the product had a stable 9% share of the $1.6 billion category, according to Paine-Webber analyst Andrew Shore.

OLEAN

Procter & Gamble Co. brushed aside complaints from watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest and received a clean bill of health from U.S. Food & Drug Administration for Olean in June. That followed three major national Olean launches: P&G’s Fat-Free Pringles and its Portland, Me., test of an Eagle brand corn chip, plus Frito-Lay’s Wow! chips. Although Wow! was showing sales of up to $40 million a month-which for many other products would be considered a home run-analysts who had predicted blockbuster status were closely watching dips in sales results on a month-to-month basis.

MACH3

Living up to expectations is hard when the product takes $750 million to develop and $300 million to market, but the numbers turned in by Gillette Co.’s new razor since its June launch have been impressive by most standards. Cumulative sales of Mach3 passed $100 million in November. The launch pushed Gillette’s monthly share of the combined $850 million razor and blade market to 70%, up 2.7 points from November 1997. But Gillette’s third-quarter earnings stumble, some seemingly disappointing shipment data and reports that some men have trouble using Mach3 in tight spots, are still casting a shadow.

ST. JOHN’S WORT

As herbal remedies marched into the mainstream this year, St. John’s Wort was one of the most sough- after supplements. The herb earned the helpful nickname “nature’s Prozac,'’ referring to the Eli Lilly & Co. antidepressant drug, and garnered handwritten signs in store windows to announce its arrival. Primarily marketed by a number of smaller manufacturers, Pharmaton Natural Health Products broke the first national TV campaign behind Movana, a $15 million effort from Sawtooth Group, Woodbridge, N.J.

`CONTENT’ gets close & personal

Promising to expose the media, warts and all, Brill’s Content was launched in a blaze of publicity. The first cover story, analyzing the performance of the media in covering the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton scandal, was touted by The New York Times. Founder Steven Brill then appeared on a round of talk shows defending the piece, which accused Special Prosecutor Ken Starr of inappropriately leaking crucial information to the press. So rather than just reporting on how others were covering the news, Brill’s Content itself became part of the Monica-Bill-Ken news saga. In recent months, the title has seen a fair amount of turnover in editorial staff, topped by the departure of Editor Michael Kramer.

iMAC brings Apple back from oblivion

Apple Computer brashly reentered the consumer market in August with the launch of iMac, a sleek $1,299 computer backed with a highly acclaimed $100 million ad blitz. iMac quickly became the No. 1-selling PC in U.S. computer superstores. Apple’s U.S. retail PC share more than doubled from 2% in June to 4.4% in October, but that was still only good enough for sixth place. With the expected launch in early ‘99 of a cheaper iMac and a return to the Super Bowl next month for the first time in 14 years, Apple aims to keep staging its big Mac attack.

PHOTO (COLOR): viagra Ad

PHOTO (COLOR): Lucky dog

PHOTO (COLOR): Teletubbies

PHOTO (COLOR): Colgate Total

PHOTO (COLOR): Titanic ‘tie-ins’

PHOTO (COLOR): MACH3 Ad

PHOTO (COLOR): Olean Ad

PHOTO (COLOR): ‘Content’ cover

PHOTO (COLOR): iMac

---

Copyright of Advertising Age is the property of Crain Communications Inc. (MI) and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder`s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use.
Source: Advertising Age, 12/21/98, Vol. 69 Issue 51, p13, 1p

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 8:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.