Advertising: Off-Color Wordplay From Kraft, Part of a Big Marketing Blitz

Off-Color Wordplay From Kraft, Part of a Big Marketing Blitz

The chefs Rocco DiSpirito and Carla Hall, portrayed as children, in Kraft ads with the slogan "Get your chef together."

THE Kraft Foods Group is continuing a major marketing blitz with an initiative for a new product line â€" budgeted at more than $30 million in the first year â€" that seeks to tap into the current mania with all things chef.

The new line of nine meal-starters, called Kraft Recipe Makers, is being introduced with a campaign that features two celebrity chefs, Rocco DiSpirito and Carla Hall, presented in commercials as if they were a smart-aleck brother and sister critiquing their parents’ ability to come up with new and different dinner menus. In keeping with efforts by Kraft Foods to reach younger consumers, the campaign also will run in a full range of nontraditional media that includes digital ads and a presence in social media like Twitter.

In another sign of how eager Kraft Foods is to update its marketing tactics, the campaign takes a cheeky tack as embodied by some mildly naughty wordplay in the theme of the ads, “Get your chef together,” which doubles as the address of a microsite, or special Web site, devoted to the new line.

“We’re just trying to be contemporary and evolve with our consumers,” said Ann Stockman, brand manager for Recipe Makers at Kraft Foods in Northfield, Ill., “and talk in a way that resonates with them.”

“We were not targeting it to be a play off a vulgar word,” she added. “Consumers will take it in the spirit it’s intended.”

Patrick O’Neill, executive creative director at the Los Angeles office of Being, the creative agency of Kraft Recipe Makers, said of the theme: “It’s kind of a call to action, and fun to say. And let’s face it, food’s fun. Ads for food shouldn’t have to be so functional.”

Being Los Angeles, part of the TBWA Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group, also creates saucy ads for another Kraft Foods brand, Kraft Zesty Italian dressing. Those ads present a sexy spokesman nicknamed the Zesty Guy, who likes to pitch the product shirtless and, sometimes, pantsless, clad only in a chef’s apron or picnic blanket.

The Kraft campaigns are indicative of how ads from mainstream marketers are loosening up â€" or becoming crass and crude, depending on your perspective â€" to reflect changing societal mores, particularly when it comes to younger shoppers. Other recent examples include ads for Slim-Fast diet products sold by Unilever, which depict women thinking, “I want to show off my new ass,” and commercials for the Kmart division of Sears Holdings in which shoppers utter provocative-sounding phrases like “Ship my pants” and “Big gas savings.”

The popularity of the Kmart commercials â€" the one about pants, for instance, has had more than 19.3 million views on YouTube â€" may be a reason the Kmart creative agency, Draftfcb, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, was able to keep the account in a recent review. Some in advertising, however, question the approach.

“What are you telling consumers, you’re a potty-mouth brand?” asked Anthony Sperduti, who founded, with Andy Spade, the Partners & Spade agency in New York.

“If your only goal is to raise awareness” or generate ideas that “a 25-year-old passes around” in social media like YouTube, Mr. Sperduti said, such tactics could be effective in the short term. “But where is the long-term?” he added.

(Mr. Sperduti is no prude. A new line of sleepwear and underwear that he and Mr. Spade plan to bring out under the Sleepy Joe’s brand name includes a T-shirt that is to bear a slogan that, to paraphrase its message by omitting a four-letter word, will declare, “Fie on tech.”)

In addition to Kraft Recipe Makers, Kraft Foods recently introduced another meal-starter product line, Kraft Fresh Take, and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on campaigns meant to freshen the appeal of venerable brands that in addition to Kraft Zesty Italian include A.1. steak sauce, Jell-O, Miracle Whip, Oscar Mayer bacon, Oscar Mayer hot dogs, Stove Top, Temp Tee and Velveeta.

The sheer volume of what Kraft Foods is trying to accomplish can be glimpsed in media outlets like Food Network Magazine; the September issue carries ads for 10 Kraft Foods brands.

Makers of packaged foods like Kraft Foods are working harder at marketing because the last five years have been a propitious time for them as budget-minded consumers cut down on dining out in favor of eating at home. The trade-off is that “consumers everywhere struggle every night with the question, ‘What’s for dinner?’ ” Ms. Stockman said.

“There are a lot of nights when they’re time-pressed, and can’t do everything from scratch,” she added, yet still want “to put a fresh meal on the table.” Enter Kraft Recipe Makers, sauces to which users add ingredients like beef, chicken or fish.

That is explained in the commercials with Mr. DiSpirito and Ms. Hall, which depict them as a tough audience for Mom and Dad to please at dinnertime.

In one spot, after the father tells his children to turn off the TV set and come to the table, Mr. DiSpirito says, “You’ve got one commercial break to impress me.” Ms. Hall looks at dinner and declares: “Three-cheese chicken Florentine? Ambitious for a Thursday.”

Moments later, they are impressed. “I am loving the layers of flavor,” Mr. DiSpirito says. Ms. Hall interjects, “I am getting some Parmesan notes.” Mr. DiSpirito, approvingly, tells Dad, “Keep this up, you could have your own show, chef.”

The spot ends with an announcer’s spiel: “Introducing Kraft Recipe Masters. Two complementary sauces with your fresh ingredients, so you can get your chef together.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 13, 2013, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Off-Color Wordplay From Kraft, Part of a Big Marketing Blitz.

Times Chairman Sells a Portion of His Stock

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, sold 50,000 shares of his company’s stock last week, a day after declaring that the family-owned newspaper was not for sale.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing released on Monday evening, Mr. Sulzberger sold 50,000 shares at $12 a share on Aug. 8. The filing noted that Mr. Sulzberger continued to own 173,675 Class A shares in company stock.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company, said that the stock sale “is part of Arthur’s normal estate planning.” She said that the 50,000 shares represented a small percentage of his holdings, which in addition to Class A shares include stock options and shares held in a family trust.

“Personally, he is still very invested in Times Company stock,” Ms. Murphy said.

The Times Company has a dual share structure: Class A stock that is publicly traded, and a special class of stock, Class B, that allows the Sulzbergers to elect about 70 percent of the company’s board.

Mr. Sulzberger’s sale followed a week of upheaval in the newspaper industry, in which The Times sold The Boston Globe to John W. Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, and the Graham family announced that after 80 years it was selling The Washington Post to Jeffrey P. Bezos, founder of Amazon.

After those sales, there was speculation among media analysts that Mr. Sulzberger and his relatives would follow suit and consider selling The Times. The Times is one of the last major American newspapers run by a family.

But last Wednesday, Mr. Sulzberger and Michael Golden, the company’s vice chairman and Mr. Sulzberger’s first cousin, issued a statement stressing that they had no plans to sell The Times. The most recent earnings released by the Times Company show that it swung to a profit in the second quarter, with gains in digital subscriptions, though it still faced a challenging advertising market.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 13, 2013, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Times Chairman Sells a Portion of His Stock.

‘Breaking Bad’ Premiere Draws Biggest Audience in Its History

Surrounded by a whirlwind of media coverage and critical praise, the AMC drama “Breaking Bad” began its final run of eight episodes on Sunday night with the biggest audience in the show’s history, 5.9 million viewers.

The hugely discussed episode - it was the subject of more than 750,000 messages on Twitter on Sunday - proved its potency in the category most desired by many television advertisers: viewers between 18 and 49 years old. The episode reached 3.6 million viewers in that group, the second-best number of the year on cable television, topped only by another AMC hit, “The Walking Dead,” which hit 8.1 million in that category.

The total audience was up more than 100 percent from the previous season premiere for “Breaking Bad,” 2.9 million total viewers.

“Breaking Bad” has been the standard-bearer for the television trend of “binge watching,” so an increase was to be expected as new viewers have been joining the series. But few shows more than double their audience in their final season.

AMC followed “Breaking Bad” with the premiere of a new drama, “Low Winter Sun,” which did not receive strong reviews. Its total audience of 2.5 million is still excellent by cable standards, but obviously represented a significant falloff. It also had only 1.4 million viewers in the 18-49 category, a drop of more than two million from its lead-in show.

AMC extended its night with an edition of “Talking Bad,” a takeoff on its successful “Talking Dead” show, which follows “Walking Dead” episodes. That show, which featured an interview with Vince Gilligan, the creator of “Breaking Bad,” managed 1.2 million viewers. But it was placed an hour after the end of the “Breaking Bad” premiere in order to accommodate “Low Winter Sun,” which probably cut down sharply on the number of “Bad” fans who watched.

Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com.

Q. Who supplies the voice of the camel in the new Geico “Hump Day” commercial?

A. The voice heard in the commercial, which likens how happy Geico customers are to how happy a camel is on Wednesday â€" also known as “Hump Day” â€" is provided by Chris Sullivan, according to Theresa Dunn, a spokeswoman at the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., which is the longtime creative agency for Geico.

Mr. Sullivan is “an actor, voiceover talent and musician with many years of experience in the entertainment industry,” Ms. Dunn writes in an e-mail. In addition to Geico, Mr. Sullivan’s “commercial acting career includes work for Jack Daniel’s, Snickers, Hilton and Budweiser.”

Mr. Sullivan has a personal Web site and a page on IMDb.

Q. This is in reference to the Q. and A. on July 15, before you went on vacation, about a Clorox bleach commercial and a woman’s belief that she heard the child in the spot say, “I’m Mitt Romney.”

I believe that in replying to her, you shared a link to the wrong commercial because what the boy says (“Mommy, I made poo poo”) would be hard to confuse with Mr. Romney’s name. There was, however, another spot for Clorox bleach in which the little boy yells, “Mommy, I went potty.” Although I still don’t hear “Mitt Romney,” I can see how the potential error might happen.

A. Thanks, dear reader, for clearing that up. Although the “potty” spot is no longer available on YouTube, descriptions of it I found on Facebook suggest that it was indeed the Clorox commercial to which the inquiring reader was referring.

Campaign Spotlight: Ads Seek to Clear Up Qualms About Cataract Surgery

Ads Seek to Clear Up Qualms About Cataract Surgery

Ads from a new campaign on cataract surgery assert that “today’s advanced technology” enables doctors to offer patients “an opportunity to get your youthful vision back.”

Though it ultimately proved unsuccessful, the advertising campaign that introduced the phrase “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile” has had considerable influence on popular culture, with the phrase entering the vernacular as shorthand for something, usually in the commercial realm, that has been updated for a new generation of consumers.

Take, for instance, a new campaign from the Alcon division of Novartis, which features print advertisements that carry the headline “This is not your mother’s cataract surgery.” The campaign, now under way, is meant to educate the baby boomer generation about cataract surgery and how, as the ads put it, “today’s advanced technology” enables doctors to offer patients “an opportunity to get your youthful vision back.”

The campaign, with a budget estimated at $3 million, includes, in addition to the print ads, a special Web site, or microsite, and digital ads. The agencies involved in the campaign include HCB Health in Austin, Tex., for the creative duties; the Starcom division of the Starcom MediaVest Group, part of the Publicis Groupe, for the media duties; and Tribal Worldwide, part of the DDB Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group, which built the microsite.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a collaboration between Alcon and the AARP Media Sales unit of AARP that involves AARP print and digital properties. More than $1 million of the total ad budget is to be spent in the properties represented by AARP Media Sales, which include AARP The Magazine and the aarp.org Web site.

As part of the collaboration, Alcon and AARP teamed for a telephone survey of 1,000 members of AARP, age 50 and older, to find out about their awareness and understanding of cataracts and cataract surgery. The results of the survey helped guide the creation of the campaign.

The partnership is another example of an increasingly popular trend on Madison Avenue known as content marketing, which brings together brands and media companies for advertising that is primarily meant to be entertaining or informative rather than using hard-sell tactics to peddle products.

That fits well with the Alcon campaign because its principal goal is to advocate for cataract surgery in general among consumers rather than promote specific Alcon surgical products to them or medical professionals.

“Typically, our marketing efforts have been geared to professional audiences,” says Seba Leoni, vice president and general manager for United States surgical at Alcon in Fort Worth. “Rarely do we go to consumers.”

“This is a first-of-a-kind campaign,” he adds.

The collaboration with AARP is “for focused objectives aimed at driving awareness,” Mr. Leoni says, “to inform and educate about available options for cataract surgery, and how it can be tailored to individual needs.”

“AARP is critical because it reaches the target audience, 50-plus,” he adds, including people with cataracts who “have not been diagnosed” as well as “people who have been diagnosed but not treated yet.”

In the survey, only two out of five respondents who are cataract patients said they planned to have surgery in the next two years. Among the explanations for putting it off, 44 percent said their vision was “fine for now” and 14 percent said they were afraid, fearful or scared of the surgery.

“Vision health is a top priority” for older people, Mr. Leoni says, and they “are generally aware about cataracts but may not know about all the treatment options available today.” Of course, as the leader in cataract surgery, it is in Alcon’s interest to let them know more about surgical treatments.

That is reflected in a section of the survey devoted to responses from people who had cataract surgery. Four out of five said it was easier than they expected, according to the survey, and two out of three said it was not painful.

“The outcome is extremely positive, but there may be some hesitation,” Mr. Leoni says, especially among those who are “not aware how far cataract surgery has come” and how other conditions like presbyopia and astigmatism can also be treated during the surgery.

That perception is expressed in the “This is not your mother’s cataract surgery” headline.

“Twenty years ago, they didn’t have the advances in technology they have today,” says Kim Carpenter, vice president for account services at HCB Health.

“We want to educate the baby boomer population that when you’re diagnosed it’s not something to fear,” she adds, “and that cataract surgery is an opportunity to have better vision than you’ve had.”

Ms. Carpenter calls cataracts “one of those silent thieves” that can take a toll among today’s older people who are used to “an active life style.”

“This generation doesn’t accept the status quo,” she says, “and they’re taking better care of themselves” in areas like eye health.

The collaborative campaign represents “a great opportunity for Alcon and a great opportunity for AARP to educate its members,” she adds.

Patricia Lippe Davis, vice president for marketing at AARP Media Sales, notes that “as of next year, 100 percent of boomers will be 50” because the baby boom generation is defined as those Americans born from 1946 through 1964.

Ms. Davis traces the origins of the partnership between AARP and Alcon to an article, “Six Ways to Save Your Eyesight,” that appeared in the September/October 2011 issue of AARP The Magazine.

“There was an Alcon advertisement in that issue, and that ad was extremely successful for the company,” she recalls, which led to Alcon’s reaching out to AARP Media Sales to ask about potential joint initiatives in “the vision space.”

That produced the survey, which was conducted in April, followed by the campaign, which appears in the August/September issue of AARP The Magazine along with an article, “The Truth About Cataracts and Cataract Surgery.”

The growing appeal of content marketing is tempered by concerns about a blurring of the line between advertising and editorial content. In this instance, Ms. Davis says, there was an agreement that the content would be shared by Alcon and AARP but that Alcon “can have no influence on any editorial that was created.”

“This allowed us to create member value,” she adds, “letting us go deeper into a subject affecting our members.”

In addition to the AARP media properties, the campaign is appearing in publications like Golf, Guideposts, Ladies’ Home Journal, Prevention, Reader’s Digest, The Saturday Evening Post and Spry. The other online media outlets include AOL, Healthgrades and WebMD.

The campaign is scheduled to run through the end of the year. And “we’re already planning for 2014,” says Ms. Carpenter of HCB Health.

The intent is to introduce another creative approach in October and November, she adds, that will be “all about celebrating your independence, your freedom from cataracts,” reflecting how 90 percent of the respondents to the survey said their independence is “extremely important” to them.

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